Tomorrow, on its way to live at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, Discovery will do a flyby atop the NASA SCA, which is a modified 747. The flyover is between 10am and 11am, and NASA has released a map of good places to watch for Discovery as she’s flown into Dulles. I would imagine that many of the places on this map will be packed with spectators as the Shuttle comes, so I would also recommend Oronoco Park in Alexandria, or Columbia Island Marina, or from a “conveniently disabled car” on the Wilson or 14th Street Bridges.
Get out the long glass, photographers, we’re betting there are some once-in-a-lifetime shots out there.
View Sites for Viewing Space Shuttle Discovery in a larger map
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This will be the second time I’ll have seen a space shuttle on a 747, though I was really young the first time Enterprise stopped by Dulles. The Concorde flyover was really, really loud too. Of course, the Concorde used to fly out of Dulles every Sunday morning around 11:42 a.m. among other times.
This advance information proved to be pretty useless. I work near Union Station (the delta of train tracks is visible on the map), and this map shows no flybys around the Capitol or Union Station, so I figured I’d be missing it. I went outside to mail a letter, and people were milling around, so I waited and saw it for about 5 seconds. I heard today that it flew by us 3 times.
Thanks for the feedback, Chris.
We were working off the information that NASA’s public information team had made available to us. They did not release the full flight path of the SCA, and obscured the tail number with the FAA, possibly for security reasons, or we could have provided more flight path info.
I was in the same boat yesterday – fully expecting to miss it as the points suggested were all in the southern wedge of the “square” of DC. I was fortunate and surprised to have it overfly my car as I drove up Wilson Boulevard.
Sorry, but we worked off the information we were given and the results of our conversations with NASA.
I wish they’d done better by the people of DC.
Yeh, I realize it is not your fault – NASA wasn’t very forthcoming with useful information.