"Houston and station, from Discovery, physical separation," an astronaut radioed at 3:26 p.m. EDT as powerful springs in the station's docking mechanism gently pushed the shuttle away as the two spacecraft sailed above central Asia in orbital darkness.
While all of those cool things were happening 351 km above the earth and at a mind boggling speed of 27, 700 km/h, I was waiting on the ground preparing for their arrival.
You see, I had checked the NASA Human Space Flight website to find out when the shuttle and ISS were going to go over so I had my camera ready to shoot.
At 9:17 p.m. EST the lights in the sky became visible as they approached from the south-west. They were moving fairly quickly across the sky so I only had a few minutes to get a couple of photos.
The first photo was just a quick exposure of 2.4 seconds but you can clearly see the shuttle on the right with the space station close behind.
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The next photo was a longer exposure of 23 seconds and you can see how the two trails have crossed paths and run side by side with the front one being the shuttle and the lighter rear one being the space station.
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It was a cool experiment and it was quite an interesting site to see on a clear September evening.
Note: You can click on the photos to see them bigger.
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