First Photos of the Reentry of the ATV "Jules Verne" 87
White Yeti writes with news of the reentry breakup of the ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle. All went as planned, and the ESA blog has preliminary photos. An international team of observers, in two aircraft south of Tahiti, saw a series of explosions and over a hundred small pieces of debris. Observations were mostly made using optical cameras and spectrographs. The two images on the ESA site are low-res samples, so we should get more spectacular images soon.
Re:Camera phone funding (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Camera phone funding (Score:4, Insightful)
this [esa.int] is the "Hi res" 28k JPG image on the site. Anyone else get the feeling that they rushed up there to watch it and then someone said "I thought you said you'd bring the cameras" so it was then out with the mobile phones.
Nice speculation, but the image you refer to is probably cut out from a much larger raw image. The URL has something about "800mm" in the name, which probably refers to an already somewhat decent telephoto lens having been in use. Definitely not your mobile phone!
Re:Question about atmospheric friction (Score:3, Insightful)
Walls tend to create a lot of friction when you're trying to fly through them.
Re:Why explode? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was designed to break up on re-entry, so if it made it to the ground in one piece some people would have been very angry.
Re:Why explode? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've said it before and I will say it again: The UK is the weak link. All manned programmes in Europe have received enough backing from France and Germany that they would've succeeded if we had the vision to chip in our share.
The Italians, developing their new Vega launch vehicle, are demonstrating more aerospace competence than we are - and no offence meant to Italians but that is shameful for a country that considers itself the economic success story of the continent.
I blame Thatcher. Her restructuring of the economy to make it based almost solely on finance has a) created this damned economic mess we are in now and b) left us severally lacking in high tech fields such as aerospace. In the 1970s we cooperated with France on aerospace projects such as Concorde and the ill-fated Europa rocket, but now we can only cooperate with them as a very junior partner on things such as the new Airbus.
Re:Why explode? (Score:3, Insightful)
With the uncertainty over the future of the American manned capability, there is now talk of developing an upgraded ATV which would include a re-entry module, and make ATV into a complete manned spaceflight system.
It might be handy to be able to use the ATV as an emergency return vehicle, so perhaps a heat shield would not be so bad an idea on a supply ship.
This shows a failure of imagination. (Score:3, Insightful)
This was a 16 ton, 30 meter long habitable spacecraft, used to carry supplies. The idea that there is no further use for it than to deorbit garbage is crazy. Did they offer it to any private groups (or even to the Chinese) ? If we really want to become a spacefaring civilization, we have to stop thinking in terms of billion dollar garbage runs, and start thinking in terms of what can we do with what we have.
Re:This shows a failure of imagination. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't doubt that there may be better uses for the craft but just how would you propose getting rid of the junk that accumulates? Remember, you have to be *positive* the junk doesn't stay in orbit so you have to substantially decelerate it somehow.
That means some sort of rocket so either you have a "bus" that serves the function or you have a lot of little rockets slowing down the junk.
On second thought, I suppose if their was some sort of rocket engine on the space station that was designed to eject junk at high speeds, you could both speed up the space station and dispose of the junk with one pop but lacking such an engine, I'm at a loss to think of how to better dispose of junk.