The orbiter Atlantis made a pit-stop in Amarillo on Sunday.
AMARILLO -- Some Amarilloans got a peek at something on Sunday that many do not even get to see in a lifetime.
The space shuttle Atlantis made a pit-stop at theRick Husband International Airport Sunday morning.
Atlantis landed in California instead of Florida because of weather issues. Now it needs to make its way back toKennedy Space Center and Amarillo just happened to be in right place at the right time to help it on its way.
It is quite a piggy-back ride: costing NASA about $1.7 million, and it got a lot of attention out at Rick Husband on Sunday.
Curious on-lookers were stopped on the sides of the road and trying to capture the rare moment on cameras.
"Oh my gosh even I've seen it my entire life and every time I see it it strikes me it's just amazing and to see the look on people's faces that have never seen an orbiter before and just the sheer mass of it to see their eyes light up and engage them in curiosity. It's really great," said NASA Informational Specialist Jennifer Tharpe.
It all happened because the weather was not cooperating at NASA's usual alternative landing sites.
"We were just strategically located where the weather was and also geographically coming across the country," said Airport Manager Scott Carr.
An old myth states that Amarillo is an alternative landing site but that is not the case.
"This is an unusual occurrence and we were glad that it worked out and it worked out very well," said Tharpe.
Amarillo was a great alternate alternative because the runway at the airport (an old strategic air command base) is big enough to handle the craft.
"We have a 13,500 foot runway by 300 feet wide and that's almost identical to what they have at the shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Center," said Carr.
Though it was an incredible sight (the orbiter was on the ground for about two hours) it was just a refeuling, nothing went wrong and there was not anything to be afraid of.
"It was a simple aircraft operation, a routine aircraft operation of a Boeing 747. The only difference was that it had a 713 thousand pound shuttle or orbiter attached to the top of it," said Carr.
The Atlantis and the 747 it is riding on will spend the night in Omaha, Nebraska before making their way back to Florida on Monday.
