#Shuttle Endeavour

[pepperjunkie]

STS-118 Endeavour Rollout..

[auxon]

the shuttle doesn’t have a mission today so it’s chase’s turn to take her out for exercise

[planeyboys]

honey you won't believe what I saw driving down the 42 in Inglewood... a 2009 Altima can you believe it???

[humanoidhistory]

September 21, 2012: It’s just another day in L.A. as the Space Shuttle Endeavour passes overhead on its way to LAX, the last stop before retirement at the California Science Center.

[odinsblog]

In 2012, NASA moved the space shuttle Endeavour through the streets of Los Angeles to the California Science Center.

[junryou]

Fourteen years ago today, I had the opportunity to see the last launch of the space shuttle Endeavour (STS-134).

[lonestarflight]

"Technicians wear hardhats as the vertical stabilizer of NASA's newest space shuttle orbiter, named Endeavour (OV-105) is suspended above Station 2 (Building 150) of the Space Transportation Systems Division of Rockwell International in Palmdale, California."

Date: December 23, 1987

NASA ID: S88-25362

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019, Simon Kinberg)

21/01/2025

[yodawgiheardyoulikemecha]

Endeavour's Maiden Flight by NASA on The Commons Via Flickr: STS-49, the first flight of the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour, lifted off from launch pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on May 7, 1992 at 7:40 pm EDT. The STS-49 mission was the first U.S. orbital flight to feature four extravehicular activities (EVAs), and the first flight to involve three crew members working simultaneously outside of the spacecraft. The primary objective was the capture and redeployment of the INTELSAT VI (F-3) which was stranded in an unusable orbit since its launch aboard the Titan rocket in March 1990. NASA Media Usage Guidelines Credit: NASA Image Number: 9256691 Date: May 7, 1992

[nocternalrandomness]

Johnson Space Center Houston, Texas

[pepperjunkie]

Kliuchevskoi volcano major eruption, 1994, from Space Shuttle Endeavour..

[ages-and-pages]

Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-134

The space shuttle Endeavour is seen on launch pad 39a after the rollback of the Rotating Service Structure (RSS), Sunday, May 15, 2011, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. During the mission, Endeavour and the STS-134 crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre. Launch is targeted for Monday, May 16 at 8:56 a.m. EDT. Photo credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Cliff Steenhoff on Flickr

[chernobog13]

The space shuttle Endeavour docked at the International Space Station.

[littlewalken]

Space shuttle Endeavour and a Carnotaurus. Both are small armed apex predators.

[toaarcan]

The Black Knight Satellite

Alright I want to talk about the 'Black Knight Satellite' because it's funny as fuck.

This image is claimed by many to be "the Black Knight Satellite", and it's the centrepiece of a conspiracy theory and very popular with the "unsolved mysteries" sector of the Internet. If you've ever watched a YouTube video about "ooo spoopy" things that people don't understand, you've probably heard of it, and seen this photo.

Like a lot of "unsolved mysteries", the unsolved mystery of the Black Knight Satellite is actually completely solved. We know exactly what it is. We knew what it was before any of the videos about the 'mystery' were ever uploaded. We knew what it was before YouTube existed. We knew what it was from the moment that the photograph was taken by the crew of STS-88 in 1998.

But before I tell you that, let's talk about the claims that conspiracy theorists and UFO-nuts make about it, so we can laugh at them!

The claim is that the object in this image is an artificial satellite of alien origin that has been orbiting the Earth for 13000 years. Supposedly, Nikola Tesla made contact with it during his 1899 experiments with radio waves, but its purpose remains unknown. Spooky! Also, complete bullshit!

In actuality, the strange radio pulses that Tesla picked up were most likely pulsars, which hadn't been identified by science yet. Pulsars aren't machines, they're a type of neutron star, so they're not aliens.

The figure of "13000 years" originated with a Scottish author who was making shit up and later said that he was, in fact, making shit up.

The name "Black Knight" is most likely derived from the Black Knight rocket, a British test-bed rocket/ballistic missile intended for testing the re-entry components of the Blue Streak missile, as part of what would become the Black Arrow program.

If you've never heard of these British spacecraft, it's because the government cancelled the program after just four flights, the last of which put the Prospero satellite into orbit, making us the only country in the history of the world to attain and then abandon the capability of putting satellites in orbit. Because we've been playing "Rule Britannia" on an out-of-tune kazoo for decades and we're unlikely to stop any time soon.

This is a surviving Black Knight, on display in Woomera, Australia, where the program launched from. The last Black Arrow rocket, along with a spare of the Prospero satellite, is on display in the Science Museum in London.

Contrary to what it's name might suggest, Black Arrow looked like a giant flying lipstick. No part of it was black except for the hazard striping.

(This is a mockup, also at Woomera. The real thing is displayed on its side with its fairing open, so it's harder to see its lipstick-y glory)

Basically, all these unrelated elements were glommed together to create the mysterious "Black Knight Satellite."

But what about the object in the photo? What is this mysterious satellite orbiting our world?

It's a thermal blanket from the STS-88 mission. They talked about it as it floated away from Endeavour, and this is readable in the transcripts of the mission. They also took not just the iconic photo, but six photos of the "Black Knight", showing it on course to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, several of which clearly show it to be just a floating piece of space junk.