RE: Water Dumps

From: Ted Molczan (molczan@home.com)
Date: Sun Oct 01 2000 - 19:28:41 PDT

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    Alexander Marschand asked about Space Shuttle waste water dumps:
    
    > Are the visible with normal 10x50 binoculars?
    
    My one and only shuttle waste water dump sighting was an easy naked-eye event.
    
    The spacecraft was Challenger, on mission STS 51-F.
    
    My observation was on 1985 Aug 03 at 02:40 UTC.
    
    I was located at 43.2268 N, 79.79836 W, 100 m.
    
    Challenger was in this orbit:
    
    1 15925U 85063A   85215.18749988  .00060657  00000-0  24500-3 0   134
    2 15925  49.4893 131.9966 0013629 287.5766 268.1820 15.85542810   677
    
    This was my second and final pass of the evening. I had managed to observe it
    on its first pass, just 23 min after sunset. The sky was dark for the second
    pass, which was low to my south-west.
    
    As soon as the shuttle rose into view above a neighbour's house I was stunned
    to see it looking like a surreal comet.
    
    The shuttle was its usual brilliant self, but it had a bright, nebulous,
    blue-green tail, about 0.5 deg in length, and pointed slightly ahead of the
    shuttle, and down toward the horizon. Both shuttle and tail disappeared into
    Earth's shadow after about one minute.
    
    Given the shuttle's range of about 700 km, the tail had to be at least 6 km
    long.
    
    I had no idea what I had seen, and despite a number of phone calls to NASA, I
    remained in the dark for several months, until I spotted a brief article in Sky
    and Telescope, which identified the phenomenon as a waste water dump.
    Apparently many other North Americans had seen it that night.
    
    Ted Molczan
    
    
    
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