It’s one of those situations where, as the ubiquitous “they” say, you had to be there.
Fortunately for FLORIDA TODAY Reader, photojournalist Craig Bailey where there, armed with decades of launch experience.
He came away with a photo that practically rises off the page along with SpaceX The Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off 14 minutes before sunrise on Monday, August 12. Carrying 23 Starlink satellites, it lifted off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center.
“There wasn’t much to it on my end. I just had to be there,” Bailey said. “The photo was a result of changes in the weather (thanks, Ernesto) combined with a couple of launch scrubbers.”
Fortunately, at 0637 hours, everything worked, Bailey said.
“Without the clouds on the horizon and the pre-dawn light show, this photo just isn’t the same,” he said.
“Like I’ve said before, sometimes it’s just better to be lucky.”
This article was originally published on Florida Today: Launching into a New Day: Photo of the Week, August 11–17, 2024