by yaska77
In March mattelk posted a video of footage shot from the SRB’s (Solid Rocket Boosters) during STS-133 Discovery’s launch in February. Today NASA Television on YouTube has released a similar video of footage filmed during STS-134 Endeavour’s launch on 16th May, which follows each SRB (from different angles) from launch right up until splashdown.
Some of these shots are truly amazing, and well worth half an hour of your time to see.
What is particularly interesting in the case of this video is the damage you can see occur to at least one of the shuttle’s heat tiles (at 28 minutes 15 seconds) which initially caused concern for NASA’s Mission Management team.
Seen to suddenly appear as a small white gouge in the launch video, the tile in question is actually noted in the image below as 600_1-001. All damaged tiles were eventually cleared as safe for re-entry with no repairs required.
Tile marked 600_1-001 above can be seen being damaged in the video (28m15s) - Credit: NASA
Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the ISS on Sunday 29th May at 23:53 EDT (03:53 GMT/ 04:53 BST) with landing expected at Kennedy Space Centre at 02:32 EDT (06:32 GMT/ 07:32 BST) Wednesday 1st June, bringing to an end her last ever flight. Both undocking and landing events will be featured here via NASA TV!
STS-135 Atlantis will fly the last ever shuttle mission with a current launch target of 8th July, before all 3 remaining shuttles are moved to permanent display in museums.
Filed under: NASA, yaska77 Tagged: angles, atlantis, Booster, Center, damage, discovery, Endeavour, heat, Kennedy, launch, multiple, NASA, NASA TV, postaweek2011, rocket, shield, shuttle, Solid, space, splashdown, SRB, sts-133, STS-134, STS-135, tile, video, YouTube
