Ink, marker, pearlescent ink and watercolor, on illustration board. STS-133 is very special to me: my first launch seen in person (and from the press site, to boot!) I was part of the NASA Tweetup for that mission, and 150 of us bonded in person and over Twitter, waiting patiently as the launch was delayed multiple times from November 2010. It finally lit up a perfectly clear sky on February 24, 2011. I cheered, I wept. I wandered around the press site for a long time afterwards with my friends, trying to absorb the experience. It was one of the best days of my life, watching that beautiful bird soar into the sky. I spent a long time away from my art, but having come back to it last year, I realized I was very overdue in drawing a Space Shuttle. I decided to give the background a bit of a 1980s vibe. (This is the second in a series of technical launch pieces I’m working on; the first is of the SpaceX DM-2 launch from May 2020.)