External Tank, that is. As Spacewriter said, this speaks for itself:
-
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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May 12th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
no burny burny?
poo.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Looks like a giant cigar made of awesome.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
And no, no burny.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
They might get more veiwers if the comentator went burny burny… Most incredibly dull vioce I’ve ever heard (Possible exeption of my old school chaplin, but I never stayed awake long enough to be sure)
May 12th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Dang, I wanted to see it all the way until the parachute deployed.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
It’s not immediately clear to me why it falls back to Earth. At what point is the E.T. released from the orbiter? How close does it get to obtaining orbit itself?
May 12th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Actually, to me it looked like first it visibly “blackened” on the underside and the closer end, then the whole thing started to glow from the heat. That was my perception, but it could have been the lighting as well.
But burny burny could have been fun as well =)
May 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Hey, Phil. The Youtube video in the text link, while interesting in itself, does not match the embedded video.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Is the second link supposed to lead to ‘FSM Evangelism’ video?
May 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
***curses corporate firewall***
CJSF
May 12th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Possible “minor” damage to the shuttle?????
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8046219.stm
May 12th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
@Mike – the ET is released shortly after main engine cut off.
It falls back to Earth since at the time of its release, it and the orbiter are on a sub-orbital trajectory. The shuttle then uses its OMS engines to attain orbit.
See http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts_mes.html#mes_2nd_stage and http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts_mes.html#mes_insertion
May 12th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
That is quite spectacular. It must be falling a one hell of a rate. Where was camera? Surely not on the shuttle itself. (I don’t have audio, so if it was mentioned I would have missed it).
A few years back I recall seeing this from a camera on the fuel tank itself. Watching the shuttle “fall away” was fantastic. Most of the journey down to earth was a bit tedious, but it was great to see the ‘chute open and then SPLASH!!
May 12th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Vernon, there’s no parachute attached to it… the whole tank burns/breaks up on reentry.
Looked like the video cut off just before the fun part.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Very cool, especially in High Def! At about the 2:10 mark, a piece of debris can be seen… either foam or ice!
May 12th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
dbalsdon:
I may be wronng on this, But I believe the tank re-enters over the Indian Ocean
May 12th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I thought at one time the shuttle would detach the E.T before it reached orbital speed so that the E.T. would not go into orbit and then obtain orbital velocity with the OMS engines. Is this right and if so when did they change this?
May 12th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Definitely foam – they’re doomed.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Disclaimer: Wikipedia is my source on this, so may not be accurate.
The tank breaks up, and the debris lands in the Indian ocean.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
This blog use to be about antivaxxers, creationists and politics
not space. I’m very disapointted and I am thinking about not readin this blog again.(sorry had to get at least on snark a day or I would explode.)
May 12th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Suppose to be “one snark”, also need to make on corredtion a day.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
That’s a big one!
May 12th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Oh, and an update from the bbc(and kinda O.T.).. apparently they’ve found some minor damage to Atlantis. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8046219.stm
May 12th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I can’t decide:
Epic Fall!
or
Intelligent Falling!
J/P=?
May 12th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
That camera likely has more processing power than the shuttle’s computer(s). Which if true is a bit chilling.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Falling back to Earth from very high altitude looks much the same as a low, decaying orbit. It really illustrates the Newtonian idea that an orbit is the same as falling but constantly missing the Earth.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
@dbalsdon:
The Lockheed Martin website confirms the re-entry area for the ET… Looks like wiki got this one right!
lockheedmartin dot com/data/assets/12742 dot pdf
Type in as you would a regular net addy!
May 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Great more space junk / more sea pollution.
When are we going to be able to get to space with a fully reusable spacecraft (+fuel) again?
May 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
It looks as if it’s accelerating ahead of the shuttle as it falls. I think it makes sense that a lower orbit is a faster one, which is interesting. I remembered this from Larry Niven’s “Integral Trees”:
In takes you East.
East takes you Out.
Out takes you West.
West takes you In.
…which I found quite beautiful for some reason.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I would not expect the shuttle to be able to see a close-up of the actual friction burn, or I would fear for the shuttle! Thinking about it, the “burn” happens when the atmosphere has become thick enough to cause massive air resistance/friction (which of course causes deceleration) at the speed of the object. Here, the tank does not even appear to be decelerating, and still looks awfully close to shuttle orbiter speed and altitude, only slowly drifting away in a slightly lesser orbit. I would think that by the time the glow builds, the tank would have already experienced quite a bit more altitude drop and some significant deceleration as the friction built up in the early pre-glow phase. By then, I would think the tank would be well away from the shuttle, rapidly being left behind, probably out of line-of-sight from the curvature of the Earth (I could be wrong on this) from the orbiter.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
AFAIK ET is one burn away from reaching orbit – at the time of ET separation, the orbiter is in preliminary orbit with low point still in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, so the perigee is raised with an OMS burn at apogee. With no such burn for the ET, on its next perigee, it loses speed and reenters.
Disclaimer: I don’t even remember where I have read this, so it could be completely wrong
But I’m almost sure, that ETs don’t fall in the Indian ocean – being completely in the southern hemisphere, it would severely restrict available launch windows – they should be timed so the shuttle always flies over the ocean. Pacific and Atlantic oceans are better – they run from pole to pole
And the only time, when I have seen both shuttle and ET, they flew in SW – NE direction over me (I’m in Bulgaria), i.e. flying generally towards Russia – several thousand kms away from Indian ocean.
Btw. is was a FANTASTIC sight – bright white shuttle flying with no so bright orange ET nearby. Here is a picture of this flyby: http://forum.starrydreams.com/viewtopic.php?t=1727 (click on the image for a video – little shaky, but still it was an incredible sight for me)
May 12th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
NASA released pictures of the damage and completed the heat shield survey: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main.
@Michael L — Good eye on the debris!
May 12th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Another successful fallure from NASA?
May 12th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I’m glad it speaks for itself because the commentator is more asinine than a sports commentator.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
From the rate at which the background clouds are sweeping past, it’s evident that the scene was shot with a long focal length lens. Assuming that the orbiter is only at an altitude of about 160 km, that places its orbital speed at 7.8 km/s, and the clouds are (at nadir) whipping by at 2.8 degrees/s. It’s a little hard to get a very accurate rate, but the clouds appear to be crossing the field from lower-right to upper-left at roughly 3 degrees/s (early in the video, before the zoom is changed), and the tank then is about 2.8 degrees from tip to tail. The tank is 48 m tall, so that places it at not less than 1 km from the orbiter.
Of course, if the orbiter was much higher than 160 km, and/or the tank wasn’t immediately beneath it (which I think is the case), that places the tank at more than 1 km.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Am I the only one that watched this and immediately thought, hey that looks just like BSG camera work?
May 12th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
@Davidlpf
>This blog use to be about antivaxxers, creationists and politics
>not space. I’m very disapointted and I am thinking about not readin this blog again.
Oh gawd that was funny, not sure why but I laughed hard at that David. Thanks
May 12th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
That was my first thought as well.
Very reminiscent of it.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
26. Chip Says:
Falling back to Earth from very high altitude looks much the same as a low, decaying orbit. It really illustrates the Newtonian idea that an orbit is the same as falling but constantly missing the Earth
I thought that was Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams)!
J/P=?
May 12th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
That is a great video, it even got my heart rate up a bit. I must see that with my own eyes someday!
May 12th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Steve Says: “Where was camera? Surely not on the shuttle itself.”
Actually, yes, the audio mentioned that it was shot through the flightdeck windows.
“A few years back I recall seeing this from a camera on the fuel tank itself. Watching the shuttle “fall away” was fantastic. Most of the journey down to earth was a bit tedious, but it was great to see the ‘chute open and then SPLASH!!”
You’re thinking of the SRB (strap-on booter) video. They instrumented one of them with a camera and you could watch the whole sequence.
May 12th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Michael L Says: “I may be wrong on this, But I believe the tank re-enters over the Indian Ocean”
Depending on the orbit it’s injecting into, the tank re-enters over anywhere from south-central Europe to northern Africa and the remaining debris that doesn’t burn up lands in the Indian Ocean.
- Jack
May 12th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
alexandre van de sande Says: “Great more space junk / more sea pollution.”
No space junk. The SRB’s are recovered and reused. The ET mostly burns up with only some of the hardpoints and denser structure hitting the water. It’s far, far less than even one ship sinking.
“When are we going to be able to get to space with a fully reusable spacecraft (+fuel) again?”
As soon as someone wants to fund developement.
- Jack
May 12th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
There’s a subtle aspect to this video that might escape most people. Note as you’re watching it, the portion of the ET visible keeps changing. That’s because the the attitude of the tank stays fixed in space while it’s orbiting the Earth. The orbiter is given a pitch rate such that it completes one complete 360° pitch per orbit (so that the radiators in the cargo bay doors remain pointed at the Earth). The tank has no such pitch rate, so our viewpoint changes at about 4 degrees/min, or almost 20° over the period of this video.
The motion of the tank away from the orbiter is not due to atmospheric friction, but is just the separation velocity given when the two part company.
- Jack
May 12th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Frackin’ Awesome!!
May 12th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
@Jack Hagerty,
Thanks Jack, I was wonderin’.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
(Mostly cut and pasted from an earlier BABlog post)
On April 24, 1990, I had the good fortune to witness the re-entry of the Space Shuttle external tank from a vantage point on Maui. STS-31 was the flight that put the Hubble Space Telecope in orbit. The external tank usually burns up over the Indian Ocean, but the higher inclination orbit of this flight gave NASA an opportunity to dump the tank over Hawaii. The advantage of that was to observe the breakup with the array of telescopes at the Air Force Maui Optical Station on top of Haleakala.
Detailed observation was desired because NASA wanted to see if the tank would sufficiently break up without the use of the external tank tumble valve, which is used to jettison residual oxygen and hydrogen to start the tank rotating so that when it enters the atmosphere it breaks up more readily. (If you want something to break up in the atmosphere, the last thing you want is a nice stable aerodynamic shape easily slicing through the air.)
Working on a project associated with the Haleakala station, I was notified of the impending re-entry at about 3 a.m. local time. Two bright flashes early in the re-entry were presumably the ruptures of the oxygen and hydrogen tanks. The spectacle was like watching fireworks in slow motion — colorful, bright, silent — as the streaking pieces glowed across the night leaving trails and breaking apart into an increasingly wider spray of debris. Sadly, that’s what the videos of the Columbia orbiter breaking up over Texas looked like years later.
Timothy Reed
May 12th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Cool video. I loved the launch. Watched the whole thing. I am following the mission on NASA TV and Astro_Mike on Twitter. Didja see his home movie of the crew looking all relaxed and so cool aboard Atlantis?
May 12th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
I’m kinda disappointed with this video. I know shaky-cam is popular in the movies these days, but I thought NASA fakes were held to a higher standard.
May 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am
See if we got a ufo video, just one, of that quality then maybe we’d have something to talk about.
May 13th, 2009 at 2:10 am
“Marvelous” is the only adjective that is literally appropriate for clip!
May 13th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Uhhhmmm, ET TANK? ET TANK? EXTERNAL TANK TANK?
ATM MACHINE!!! VIN NUMBER!!!
Sweet crimony almighty, what is it with people and redundancy?
Please fix this absurd title for crying out loud.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:28 am
“AFAIK ET is one burn away from reaching orbit – at the time of ET separation, the orbiter is in preliminary orbit with low point still in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, so the perigee is raised with an OMS burn at apogee. With no such burn for the ET, on its next perigee, it loses speed and reenters.”
Does this mean that the ET makes one full orbit before reentering at the Indian Ocean?
May 13th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Nitpicker: why don’t you go and nitpick at people who uploaded the video to YouTube? Nitpicking about it here doesn’t make much sense, does it?
May 13th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Zyggy says:
There is some visible blackening, but this has nothing to do with reentry, which won’t happen for some time (by which time it will have moved so far away from Atlantis that it is no longer visible). The blackening is soot from the SRB’s separation motors, little solid-fueled rockets that push the spent SRBs so they fall neatly away and don’t impact the vehicle, Which Would Be Bad. It’s actually quite a dramatic amount of soot; the first ET-cam sent up became utterly useless at the point of SRB sep because the soot totally smudged its lens. Lots of folks suggested clever and innovative ideas to resolve the issue, but NASA, opting for the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) just moved the camera a few yards down and out of range of the motors for the next ET cam.
Jack Hagerty says:
The SRBs are actually always instrumented with cameras, but not with any kind of live downlink; the cameras record to tape, which is recovered and then reviewed a couple of days later. It’s always cool, and the tumbling at the beginning is reminiscent of the sounding rocket films that were the earliest sort of spacecraft film.
The ET film is also done on every mission, even before most of the crew are allowed to leave their seats. Right away, the orbiter pitches around so that the receding ET is visible from the flight deck, allowing the crew to take footage of it. This supplements footage of the receding ET taken by cameras built into the Orbiter’s underside, right next to one of the ET’s attach points under a protective door not far from the main gear. This mission is having some trouble with the latter footage; they’re running into problems getting the system to play back the ET separation footage so they can downlink it. But at least they have the handheld images, and the tile inspection doesn’t give much reason for worry. It’d be nice to identify where the foam came from on the ET, though.
Mike says:
Not quite; it reenters before it completes an orbit, but it does get halfway around the Earth. Technically, you have to get all the way around for it to be an orbit. There is some controversy surrounding Yuri Gagarin’s flight aboard Vostok 1 for this reason — he took off from Kazakhstan but landed in Russia after one revolution, but that would mean the landing zone was somewhat short of the liftoff site. So was he the first to orbit, or not? Certainly, Vostok 1 was capable of completing additional orbits; it was in a stable orbit. It just deorbited before it got all the way around. So the question is a semantic one for the record keepers. His trajectory was clearly orbital (unlike the clearly suborbital Mercury-Redstone shots), so for all practical purposes he was indeed the first to orbit the Earth.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I’m still not fully getting this. Obviously, the ET and the orbiter part company before they reach a sufficient velocity to obtain orbit. The ET falls to Earth pretty quickly if it falls into the Indian Ocean, so it seems that the orbiter still needs to add quite a bit of velocity, but I’m surprised it has sufficient fuel to do this (where are the fuel tanks containing this fuel?).
I’ve googled around a bit for a description of when events (such as ET separation) ocurr during a launch, velocity at that point, etc. but I haven’t found it yet. Can anybody point me in the right direction?
May 13th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Thank you for the great Video. Sure wouldn’t want to be in an airplane and get hit with anything that survives re-entry.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Sorry, this post is not about the EFT. Just wanted to alert folks to this awesome Flash anim of the ISS assembly. One of the nicest info-graphics/animations I’ve seen:
http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm
May 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Those tanks go right back to Michoud in New Orleans and are recycled. Here’s the site for more info. http://www.lockheedmartin.com/ssc/michoud/ExternalTank/index.html
When Challenger happened, half the kids in my school had parents working on the E.T.
May 13th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Mike,
After the orbiter’s fuel tanks are in those two large bumps to port & starboard of the vertical stabilizer. There are smallish-sized rocket motors just behind those tanks which take care of finalizing the velocity changes.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
The tanks from the SRBs are reused, but the large tank in the video burns up on re-entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank
May 13th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
So that’s where my lipstick ended up.
Claire
May 14th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Phil, your blog has gotten yet another Fark green light from this post.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:38 am
@ Davidlpf : (May 12th, 2009 at 3:28 pm)
Suppose to be “one snark”, also need to make on corredtion a day.
What only *one* correction per day?!
You’re doing very well then.
I usually need to make several per post.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:50 am
@ Jack Hagerty: (May 12th, 2009 at 7:59 pm)
You’re thinking of the SRB (strap-on booter) video. They instrumented one of them with a camera and you could watch the whole sequence.
I could be wrong but I thought SRB stood for:
Solid
Rocket
Boosters
not “strap-on”. Although I suppose they do “strap on” in a way, there are certainly no visible straps that I can see!
May 16th, 2009 at 2:56 am
Also I think the ‘Solid’ in the SRB comes from the fact that the SRB’s use a solid chemical fuel whilst the External Tank and Orbiter components use liquid hydrogen and oxygen(?) fuel.
Incidentally, that video made me nostalgic for the time when NASA went to the trouble of painting the ET white on the earliest shuttle flights.
To see a white falling tank there would be much prettier. In My Humble Opinion anyway.
Not sure if there was any video made of the descending ETs back then.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Although I suppose they do “strap on” in a way, there are certainly no visible straps that I can see!
Now I’m just picturing the SRBs being attached with a giant pair of occy straps!
Might make separation a bit awkward!
‘Spose it could be worse … It could be duct or sticky tape holding ‘em on!
May 18th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Sorry if I missed it in the comments, but do we have any indication on how fast it was falling?