Advertisement
Snapshot
September 17, 2009
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
NASA's Hypersonic Thermodynamic InfraRed Measurements (HYTHIRM) team, based at NASA's Langley Research Center, was aboard a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion on September 11, 2009, and captured this infrared image of the space shuttle Discovery entering the atmosphere at the end of mission STS-128. The team made the image when the shuttle was approximately 30 nautical miles above their aircraft and moving at about 15 times the speed of sound, or two miles a second, on its way to Edwards Air Force Base in California. The P-3, flying over the Pacific Ocean at the time, was able to track the orbiter for about eight minutes as it traveled from horizon to horizon, decelerating while in view from Mach 19 to Mach 9. Bright areas on the nose, wing leading edges, and tail indicate the hottest parts of the shuttle's thermal protection system, around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, due to friction with the atmosphere.
