Last night around 22:10 central time, the space shuttle Columbia passed over Texas as it made a rare night time reentry returning from its latest mission. If you were out last night you probably saw it. I’d heard it would be visible and was thinking, “yeah, right, just like Halley’s Comet and all those other things that are supposed to be so cool and turn out to be nothing”. Well, folks, this one was spectacular. The shuttle was glowing bright red like one of those flares you see at traffic accidents and it was leaving a glittering white trail behind (apparently this was the thin atmosphere up there being converted to plasma by the friction of the shuttle passing through it). And it was moving really fast (12,000 MPH to be exact). It went from the western horizon to the eastern horizon in just a few seconds. The white trail lasted another minute or so and eventually it faded away.