Amazing Time-Lapse Video of Space Shuttle Discovery

By Nancy Atkinson - May 20, 2010 at 5:41 AM UTC | Missions

UPDATE:

Sorry, but the video includes an annoying loud commercial that starts up automatically every time the page loads on UT, but you should really

watch this cool video here.

Read about it below, though, first!

This is incredible! Smithsonian Air & Space photographers Scott Andrews, Stan Jirman and Philip Scott Andrews created a unique time-lapse video (at the request of shuttle commander Alan Poindexter) from from thousands of individual frames, and they condense six weeks of painstaking work into three minutes, 52 seconds (

read here how they did it).

The video quickly chronicles the processing of Discovery for the STS-131 mission, and starts at the Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, then goes on to the Vehicle Assembly Building, (the video of how the shuttle is hoisted into a vertical position and lowered onto its external fuel tank is absolutely amazing). Then it's off to the pad for launch, and you even get to see a quick glimpse of Discovery as it lands. This is the shuttle and mission for which I was able to see much of the processing and pre-launch events, so I found it especially meaningful, but it is even more poignant since the end of the shuttle program is quickly approaching.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com