CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Millions of people from around the globe watched the shuttle Atlantis land back on Earth for the last time Thursday morning, signaling the end of the U.S. shuttle program.
But it was the launch on Friday, July 8th that meant the most to a local woman named Desiree Kane, who was right there witnessing history at Cape Canaveral.
"You can see the ground move. It's like an earthquake,” said Kane. “Some people are cheering, some people are crying. I was crying.”
As a social media strategist, blogger, and self-proclaimed “space nerd,” Kane started following NASA on Twitter earlier this year. When she saw on their Twitter feed a request for applications to see the final Atlantis launch in-person, she applied immediately and within a few days, got her response.
“I got an email. It was very formal, in true NASA fashion. It requested my response in a few hours, and instead of a few hours, I immediately wrote back to accept. I [even] called my dad, and was squealing,” she added.
Kane was chosen as one of 150 people around the globe to take part in the NASA TweetUp—a social group where some of the most notable social media users network and get unprecedented access to the shuttle crew.
“I was side by side with CNN, the New York Times, NBC, big publications, news hubs,” she said. “Seth Green [the actor] is a space fan…and me, Desiree Kane from Charlotte, was there too.”
Before returning home after her two-and-a-half-day immersion into all things space, Kane was given a small souvenir shop worth of mementos. While the freeze-dried ice cream was nice, as was the “yearbook” of autographs collected, Kane says it was the opportunity to just be there seems to mean the most.
