I was out for my 10am walk as usual. Walking up Joyce Street, just south of 395 and the Pentagon, I looked up and saw the space shuttle Discovery taking a piggyback ride on 747. That’s when I remembered why there was so much traffic heading into the District this morning. I didn’t take a picture, but when I rounded the corner onto Army Navy Drive, it came around again, and I snapped two quick photos. This is the better one, zoomed in as much as I could manage. (The first flyby was much closer than this second one.)
That blur at about 11 o’clock above the shuttle is a military fighter escort.
What was remarkable was that traffic on 395 had stopped. People had pulled over and gotten out of their cars to watch and take pictures. I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.
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IT WAS AWESOME!!!
hate to be a downer but it wasn’t a military escort it was a NASA T-38 spotter plane. They also escort the shuttle as it lands after reentry.
Most likely it was there to take photos as it fly over the district.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/aircraft/T-38/index.html
I didn’t get a good look at the spotter the first time, and the second time it was much farther away. A T-38 makes sense.