Shuttle over London

[major_clanger]

When the Space Shuttle launches to the International Space Station - which, other than the recent Hubble servicing mission, is the only place it goes these days - the need to match the ISS' orbit means that its launch trajectory invariably passes over southern England about 20 minutes after take-off. If launch happens to have been timed such that it is early dawn or late dusk in the UK at the time, then it's quite likely that the Shuttle, being some 150-200 km up, will be in sunlight and so brightly illuminated and clearly visible from below.

Yesterday I noticed that the latest launch had been rescheduled, after a number of technical hitches, for midnight Florida time. That's 5am UK time, so the Shuttle, if launched, would be passing over the UK at 5.20. Right now, dawn is at around 6, so there was every prospect of seeing the Shuttle - if it launched on time, and if (a bigger if!) the sky was clear. So I set my alarm for 4.45...

Up, and a quick check of the mission status page; yes, the countdown is in its final minutes so I turn on the TV and watch what must have been a very spectacular night launch for anyone in Eastern Florida. A peer out the window shows the odd star in the London glare, so I pull on some trousers and a top and wander out into the car park. Dawn is clearly near, with the eastern sky brightening fast, but the Shuttle will be coming from the west, so I look that way.

And there it is. Two brilliant stars, each around about as bright as Venus (say magnitude -4 or so if you want to be precise), one white, the other a very obvious orange. The white one is the Shuttle Orbiter, the orange one its External Tank, now empty of fuel and separated some eleven minutes ago. About twice the width of the Moon apart, so say a degree or so, they pass overhead in a matter of seconds at perhaps twice the apparent speed the ISS usually moves at, a consequence of them both being much lower (some 200km, vs the ISS at nearer 400). In about another twenty minutes the Orbiter will burn its manoeuvring engines to place itself fully in orbit, whilst the ET will fall back to burn up over the Pacific.

I've never seen a Shuttle launch in person, and given that it's due to retire in another year or so, I doubt I will. But I think this comes close to counting.

Comments

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

I had the opportunity to watch a night launch from Daytona, Florida (about 60 miles away from the Kennedy Space Center), and it was amazing and memorable. Not as bright as the sun, but it certainly lit up the sky for some time.

It's so incredible to read your perspective of the launch from across the Atlantic.

[hatusu.livejournal.com]

Nice. I've never seen a launch either. :(

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

That's astounding - well done!

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I once saw a Shuttle land at Birmingham International Airport.

[redcalx.livejournal.com]

Really? Any details?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I assume this was the 1983 tour when NASA took Enterprise to the Paris Air Show atop one of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, stopping off in various other European countries.

[redcalx.livejournal.com]

Ahh ok. Yeh I've seen footage of the shuttle carrier before, it always looks a tad precarious and I had assumed there would be significant range, altitude and weather restrictions such that travel outside the US would be avoided. Never new one of the shuttles had been exhibited outside the US.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I was always a mite miffed that the Enterprise never went into space. Maybe the Trek fans should have campaigned over the name of the second shuttle.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

At the time, the assumption was that OV-101 (Enterprise) would be refitted to fly in space. However, results of tests on the 'Structural Test Article' STA-99, which was only ever intended for ground-based stress testing, showed that the design of the Orbiter needed to be beefed up. OV-102 (Columbia) was still in construction and so could be modified, but it became clear that OV-101 would have to be dismantled and substantially rebuilt, and in fact it would be easier to rebuild STA-99 as a flight Orbiter. So STA-99 became OV-99 (Challenger) and OV-101 sat in a hanger for twenty years before becoming the star exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum's extension site at Dulles Airport.

(If you're interested in the history and development of the Shuttle, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Not cheap, but you get your value for money - it's the size of a phone book and incredibly detailed.)

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Quite correct. I was invited down to the press conference.

Thanks for the Wiki link: I was pretty sure it was a 747 I saw, but good to get confirmation.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I saw it at Stansted during the same tour.

[rhionnach.livejournal.com]

Lucky you! I've never seen any launch but I did see the "Enterprise" fly over my home town. It was a bit of surprise, to say the least, especially as I was driving at the time.

It was here, piggybacked on a 747, doing a tour for some reason. That must have been in 1983, I think.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Nicely done!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sounds really cool - you were lucky with the weather.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

cool! the 'in person' launch, unless you're invited to the site, is loud - amazingly, unreally loud - and exotic because you're in the tropics and you see smoke to go with the light hurling itself into the sky faster than anything made has a right to; but yours doesn't sound far off.

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

The thing that got me was the lag between seeing the Shuttle go up, (it was a daytime launch and it looked like a new sun rising; we were 9 miles away) and the sound arriving. Also, not only was it incredibly loud, you could actually feel the sound roll over you like a physical wave.

(This was back in 1992, a week after Worldcon in Orlando)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Damn - I wished I'd known!

Many thanks for wriiting this - much appreciated.

If I'd seen it, I'd probably have thought it was just another plane from the US to the continent...

(And I got here via andrewducker!)

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Also got here via andrewducker - and by amazing coincidence, I was actually in Eastern Florida watching the launch (right up at the north-east tip, but we could still see a fair bit). It was rather spectacular, like a huge upside-down meteor, although we were too far away to hear anything. We didn't have a camera, alas.