Sometime after seeing a re-entry over Texas there seemed to be a big gap in re-entries over the US so I emailed NASA (prior to Columbia) asking that same question. It seemed to me that it was a great public affairs opportunity to generate interest/excitement (and funds). The response was that crew schedule had as much to do with it as anything. STS-120 back in 2007 came right through the heart of the country at mid-day and it was returning from the ISS so they weren't afraid to do it after Columbia for sure. Monte -------------------------------------------------- From: "George Roberts" <gr@gr5.org> Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 2:05 PM To: "Dale Ireland" <direland@drdale.com>; "'Roger'" <roger.in.eugene@gmail.com> Cc: "'SeeSat-L'" <seesat-l@satobs.org> Subject: Re: Shuttle landing path >> > Why did the shuttle almost always land on the ascending leg of its >> > orbit rather than the descending which gives the whole > > I'm going to guess random chance. Certainly for the non-ISS flights the > shuttle only reaches florida latitude so they are forced to wait until > florida is under that point in the shuttle's orbit. But for the ISS > flights > (which go much further north) they get two chances - an ascending and > descending pass (here ascend/descend refers to latitude, not altitude). > Florida would pass under these two orbital points twice each day about 9 > hours apart e.g. noon and 9pm every day. One of these times is likely > during daylight and one likely during night time and I expect they will go > with daylight every time regardless if it is descending or ascending. If > they are both during daylight I think they pick the one at the more > convenient time of day (astronauts more alert). But this is all a guess > based on what I know about orbits and how I might plan the shuttle landing > if it was my job. > > - George Roberts > http://gr5.org > > _______________________________________________ > Seesat-l mailing list > http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l > _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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