Alexander Marschand wrote: Where will the re-entry of the Atlantis will be visible? I read that it will be a cool night landing again. Maybe the re-entering will be very good visible, because it's coming from west to east and it will maybe very good visible at the dusk of west America or maybe in New Zealand, <snip> _______________________ There is a lot of information at The Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide by Steven Pietrobon at: http://home.tampabay.rr.com/k4lk/shuttxt.htm The NASA/Shuttle main page at: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/ will usually post landing tracks a few days before landing. But to answer your question more directly -- The Shuttle does not begin developing its ionization (plasma) wake until it is about 7500km (4660 statute miles) from landing when it is below about 360,000 feet altitude. I've seen four Shuttle reentries from California when the Shuttle has been launched into a 39-degree inclination orbit, and the wake trail is easily visible with the Shuttle 3900km from landing 2420 statute miles). But according to reports from friends in Hawaii (where the Shuttle reentry on such missions should also be visible) the trail is not developed that far out, or faintly at best. Anyone else have more info on this subject? RICK BALDRIDGE 37.27183N 121.97703W (SA-off!) Campbell, CA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 08 2000 - 09:47:07 PDT