On Friday night at 11:50pm, the SpaceX CRS-20 mission launched. This was their 20th resupply mission to the International Space Station. It was also the final mission for the Dragon 1 capsule. The booster landed at LZ-1 marking the 50th successful booster landing.
I shot this from 125 miles away in Tampa along Bayshore Blvd. That is downtown Tampa’s skyline on the left. If you are a baseball/Yankees fan, A-Rod’s house is just to the left of where the launch streak starts.
In the shot you have the launch, main engine cut-off, stage separation, the boost-back burn of stage 1, the second stage starting up, the reentry burn of stage 1, and the second trailing off into the distance until it’s engine cut-off just about the time you start to loose it in the haze.
The picture is composed of 23 20-second exposures covering about 7 minutes and 45 seconds. It was a glorious sight, even from so far away.
In other news, right before I left to shoot this, the scans of the first roll of film from the Nikon 8008S were done. I’ll post those later. Haven’t had a chance to really go through them.