DID I SEE A SPACE SHUTTLE RIDING PIGGY-BACK?

Today I was in Elizabeth, NJ and saw a plane cross the sky towards Newark Airport, I think. It was pretty close, so I'm 100% certain it was an airplane. Sounded like one, too. It was quite a unique sight!

However, I've never seen this type of craft before: It looked like an ordinary plane but with a smaller object on top (mid back to tail end or just off to the right side of the carrier). I could not determine if the piggy-backer was a small plane or a rocket.

I've been checking out Google Images for 'piggy-backed planes' and so far the only pictures similar to what I saw are for the Space Shuttle riding piggy-back on a specially made B747. Maybe that's what I saw. Mystery solved? If so, what's a space shuttle doing in the skies of New Jersey?

NASA space shuttle Columbia hitched a ride on a
special 747 carrier aircraft for the flight from
Palmdale, California, to Kennedy Space Center, Florida,
on March 1, 2001.
CREDIT: NASA/Jim Ross

How NASA Moves Space Shuttles: The Ultimate Piggyback Ride

Space shuttle Discovery and its modified 747 carrier aircraft
lift off from Edwards Air Force Base early in the morning
of Sept. 20, 2009 on the first leg of its ferry flight back
to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
CREDIT: NASA/Tony Landis

NASA Space Shuttle-Carrying Jumbo Jet Retires After One Last Flight

Space Shuttle Atlantis taking a piggy-back ride
on top of a specially modified B747 from Edwards AF
in California to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Turns out the space shuttle is exactly what I saw today:

SPACE SHUTTLE ENTERPRISE WOWS NEW YORKERS ON FINAL FLIGHT

EXCERPT: This morning I joined a large and enthusiastic crowd on the High Line, an elevated park on Manhattan's West Side, to welcome the Space Shuttle Enterprise to its new home in New York City.

We were among numerous groups who had gathered around the city and along the New Jersey and Westchester Country waterfronts to witness this spectacle. We watched as Enterprise was flown atop a NASA jet up the Hudson River at an altitude of only about 1,500 feet, and a half hour later returned, flying down the river—a heartwarming sight on an otherwise raw and windy day.

The Shuttle left Washington, D.C. about an hour earlier. It had passed the Statue of Liberty and then flew past the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, where it will be housed, in its trek along the Hudson before making a loop across through New Jersey and Queens and across Manhattan en route to a perfect landing in Kennedy airport at 11:23 a.m. . . . .

Now the mystery really is solved. . . .

LAST UPDATED: April 27, 2012