STS-133 Shuttle Mission to the International Space Station Launches Thursday 21:50 GMT

Great job Discovery and her crew - absolutely incredible to watch.

Is there any footage available for cockpit view of re-entry? I'd love to see that.

They showed a replay earlier of cockpit view with the pilot's heads up display.
As they went through the clouds and the ground became visible, the picture started breaking up and they ended the replay. Whether there is more to that cockpit view I'd love to know.
 
Someone's been watching far too much NASA TV...

bandwidth.png
 
What's the approximate altitude in that shot? I'm sure I once watched some video showing the nose still slightly glowing and the Shuttle still travelling at enormous speed. Must have been a large lens (or I imagined it!).

That's probably about 15-20km up. Sometimes in the very very early shots of the Shuttle coming in, the nose does appear to be glowing slightly. Whether this is residual heat from re-entry or some kind of trick of light I'm not sure. Or perhaps they were taken using IR, which would show the heat and the nose/leading edges would appear to glow.

Listening to the post landing conference, one of them mentioned they had a surveillance plane out in Mexico that took some images of the Shuttle re-entering overhead. At that point the orbiter would have been pretty close to peak heating and would be completely blanketed in plasma. Can't wait to see those images.
 
Great work simulatorman, berserker, merlin5 and everyone else involved with the NASA threads.

Right now we say farewell to Dsicovery.

But don't relax as:
Endeavour Rolls to Launch Pad for April Launch

Just a day after Discovery's final landing, Endeavour rolled from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A in preparations for it's launch on the STS-134 mission, currently targeted for April 19.
Live on NASA TV now.
 
Back
Top Bottom