Re: STS reentry over Texas

Robert G Fenske Jr (fenske@rgfpc.electro.swri.edu)
Wed, 28 Jul 1999 14:19:35 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Robert Reeves wrote:
> What can I say?  Spectacular!  The STS reentry tonight passed north of
> San Antonio, Texas, so it passed below Polaris and above the tree line
> across the street from me.  I have seen a number of shuttle reentrys,
> but never from the comfort of my own living room!  We killed all the inside

	I concur.  The living room provides a view of trees so I chose
instead to sit on my car hood.  This is the first re-entry I've seen that
was in a cloudless sky so I was able to follow it nearly from horizon to
horizon.  The contrail was persistent enough to be visible stretched all
the way across the sky at one point.  The Shuttle was a bright point
surrounded by a fiery, fuzzy yellowish ball.  The trail was yellowish
fading to white.
	I waited afterwards hoping to hear the sonic boom, but I never did
(and never have for any of the re-entries).

Robert Fenske, Jr.   rfenske@swri.edu    Sw     |The Taming the C*sm*s series:
Southwest Research Institute            /R---\  |
Signal Exploitation & Geolocation Div  | I    | |"The Martian canals were the
San Antonio,Texas USA  ph:210-522-3931  \----/  | Martians' last ditch effort."