Saw it too, I'm pretty sure it was the 747 Shuttle Transport aircraft
with a Nasa T-38 as escort, probably for a photo shoot of the transport
with downtown Houston as the backdrop. There was a similar picture
taken 10-15 years ago that I've seen in a number of places at JSC. If
you noticed, it had the additional vertical stabilizers located on the
ends of the horizontal stabilizers.

Mark

303pilot wrote:
This isn't soaring related, but I just saw the oddest thing out my office
window. My office is on the beltway, 15 miles from downtown. The sky is
clear. A large (bigger than a 737) passenger jet escorted by one or more
small aircraft circled downtown Houston about 30 minutes ago and departed to
the east. It made at least 1 3/4 circuits of the downtown area. The
smaller aircraft - from this distance just a glint - was at times behind and
at times ahead of the passenger jet. I first saw the passenger jet banking
over the N end of downtown, watched it make a complete circuit, begin a
second one and exit to the E.
I can't find anything about this on the news, but the local TV stations have
gotten the same report from others and are investigating. Hope it's just a
procedural infraction or something like that.