Shuttle Atlantis piggybacks over Las Cruces

By Diana M. Alba/Sun-News reporter
Posted: 06/02/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT

LAS CRUCES – Space shuttle Atlantis passed over Las Cruces on Monday morning, piggybacked on a NASA jet during a return trip to Florida.

Around 11 a.m., a Boeing 747 with the shuttle attached made its way over Las Cruces toward the NASA White Sands Test Facility and then veered south along the western face of the Organ Mountains.

Cort said the test facility didn’t have an official involvement in the shuttle’s flight, but – after the spacecraft landed in California on May 24 – had made a request that the shuttle pass over Las Cruces and the facility, as a sort of “morale booster.”

White Sands Space Harbor, located east of the San Andres Mountains, is an alternate landing site for shuttles on their return flights from space. Just one shuttle has touched down at the location, in 1982, but astronauts train at the facility weekly.

Las Crucen Mike Groves, a professional photographer, had heard on the radio that the shuttle would be in the area and was ready with his camera when it did. One of his shots captured the aircraft with the Organ Mountains in the background.

“It was so close,” he said. “I zoomed in and you could see the American flag and everything.”