Photo feature: To Vidalia and Beyond

Published 12:05 am Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Ben Hillyer | The Natchez Democrat — NASA's Orion spacecraft was escorted through the MIss-Lou on the way to Huntsville, Ala., and then on to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The module made a stop at the Vidalia Walmart Monday night as it waited for an escort over the Mississippi River bridge.

If you thought you saw a UFO on the Vidalia and Natchez highways Tuesday morning, you were almost correct. A test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft was escorted through the Miss-Lou from White Sands, N.M., to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew module spent the night at the Vidalia Walmart parking lot waiting for an escort to take them across the Mississippi River Tuesday morning. The full-scale test vehicle was used by ground crews in advance of the other tests that took place in New Mexico in 2010. Orion will serve as the vehicle that takes astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit.

Submitted photo — Cara Goodwin, at top, gets ready to add her name to the thousands of signatures other people penned on the module’s journey.

Submitted photo — Cara Goodwin’s children Jake, right, and William sit on the module’s trailer Monday evening in the Walmart parking lot.

Submitted photo