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Shuttle Re-entry

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I saw the shuttle re-enter one night. We were flying from Detroit down to Houston. Up at FL410. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shooting star...so I thought. No, its not buning out. Must be a meteor or ICBM. We metioned it to ATC that there was this fire shooting across the sky. They didn't seem to concerned about it. When we got down to Houston and walked into the FBO we saw on CNN that the shuttle had just safely landed in Florida.

It came in from the west going east. As it shot through the sky it left an orange contrail of fire behind it. It only took like 4 or 5 minutes to go from the horizon in the west to the horizon to the east. It was a little disturbing flying at FL410 and seeing this thing way above us and not knowing what it was.

CJ610
 
STS-114 is due to land at 4:46AM EDT. As others have said, the approach will be from the south. I wonder if Cuba issued an over flight permit and will charge them for it! ;)

In all seriousness, lets hope this goes without a hitch.

Side note: on a previous flight the commander was said he wanted to be as close as possible to his target speed over the numbers. He missed it by 0.3 knots. Now thats impressive!
 
2000flyer said:
Side note: on a previous flight the commander was said he wanted to be as close as possible to his target speed over the numbers. He missed it by 0.3 knots. Now thats impressive!

Wasn't there a story on the first shuttle mission similar to that? There were two guys in the shuttle (can't remember who), but the one was calling out airspeeds and just as he reached (I wanna say 186) the airspeed they were supposed to land at they heard the mains squeek on...

Pretty impressive there if ya ask me.

-mini
 
The track will bring it right over my house, guess I have to get up at 0420 to get on the roof and watch it.
 
Does anyone know if the Shuttle auto lands from re-entry? For some reason I believe the commander and pilot do not land it themselves unless the computers have malfunctioned. Also, there are two sonic booms during re-entry. The wing and elevator boom at different times, from what I have heard. But what do I know, I am not a Shuttle pilot.
 
Godvek said:
Does anyone know if the Shuttle auto lands from re-entry? For some reason I believe the commander and pilot do not land it themselves unless the computers have malfunctioned. Also, there are two sonic booms during re-entry. The wing and elevator boom at different times, from what I have heard. But what do I know, I am not a Shuttle pilot.

I cannot find it now, yet there was a post on flightinfo a couple months ago about the re-entry, one shot only, pure glide, 15 degree glide slope.

I also heard there is the initial sonic boom, then a second aftermath of the sound. Anyone know how much time after the sonic boom and the actual landing? Just checking to see if I can wait until the sonic boom to get out of bed and have enough time to watch the landing.
 
The landing is planned for runway 15. The shuttle will come from the SSE and enter the heading alignment cylinder counterclockwise: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/124490main_sts114_ksc201_short.gif

I'll be there!
This morning, about 5 a.m., both the shuttle and the ISS passed over central Florida (had a great view from MCO). First the shuttle appeared, followed shortly by the ISS. It's a neat site to see two "stars" move quickly through the entire sky in unison.
 
The only crew intervention required is to lower the gear and to brake on the ground. Although it can land by itself, I believe they usually hand fly it through the end of the TAEM phase.
 

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