space shuttle sonic boom occurred over Los Angeles and heard across southern California on Friday as the Space Shuttle Discovery landed at Edwards Air force Base at around 5:50pm Pacific, due to bad weather condition. Anything moving faster than sound will cause an explosive should called sonic boom; undoubtedly the space shuttle moved faster than sound during landing.
This space shuttle discovery was on its 14 day supply mission to the International Space Station; It covered some 5.7 million miles during the trip and its scheduled back home landing was on Thursday 10 Sep, 2009, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Unstable, stormy weather on the East Coast forced NASA to make the decision of an emergency discovery landing at Edwards Air force Base instead of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Discovery began it’s de-orbit burn with its seven astronauts, soon before 5pm, where they started burning engines for about 3-4 minutes to slow it down enough to begin its descent. Discovery landed at Edwards Air force Base approximately 50 minutes later.
Though, the shuttle has have enough supplies to stay up until Sunday but because of heavy clouds and stiff winds on Florida’s east coast NASA selected the Southern California as the backup landing site in emergency as early as Friday. Space Shuttle Discovery landed securely, without any incident.
Space Shuttle Sonic Boom
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