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Shuttle Cameras Yield Excellent Footage
Jivecat writes "All those extra cameras NASA has added to the Space Shuttle to watch for debris impacts have yielded what may be the coolest Shuttle launch footage ever. The forward-facing view from the right-hand SRB shows, at about the 2:58 mark, booster separation and Discovery zooming away. Other views are available at the main mission site."
Nice to see our government is looking out for the interests of all and protecting the freedom of all to access govt. publications by putting these in a proprietary format like Windows Media Video.
Government access doesn't begin and end with office document formats, and proprietary video formats are probably one of the worst problems of this kind. Massachusetts' and Belgium's plans are a good start, but they need to start using things like Theora etc. too.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
the NASA site suggests. The MPlayer plugin for Firefox (same thing you use for CNN's video) works fine. Great footage.
"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator"-Adolf Hitler or George W Bush?
Does your webcam do that at Mach 25? How about at very high (hundreds or thousands of degrees F.) of heat? Something tells me the quality of your webcam suffers (ie, it melts) in those sorts of situations...
The camera supplier has a history of offering these amazing videos in MPEG format. Lets hope the new Discovery videos will be added to the last. The image of the orbiter/ET accelerating from the spent boosters is some of the most spectacular aerospace footage I have ever seen.
an ill wind that blows no good
For the one video linked, I'm amazed it didn't get slashdotted immediately. Very interesting to watch the launch sequence. At 3 min, I thought it was getting a bit boring, but wondered what else was interesting in the rest of the footage. At about 8 min, it got interesting again, with the very quick transition from "over the clouds" to "underwater". Not much new to see after 9 min though.
I do wish my webcam could deal with that wide a range of operating environments though! You quickly forget the engineering that goes into something as simple as a camera housing.
[
In the End, like everything else in the world--I blame the American Government. I mean damn it people! If it doesn't have the world Terror or an Arab in the footage this isn't worth showing the world as news.
Something like 4m 30s of freefall (3:00-7:30) on that video. Very neat. Can someone with greater knowledge than I explain how the camera survived re-entry, or is there no re-entry at that altitude yet?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
These are cool views, but NASA has always had a set of cameras (albeit smaller) watching launches. In the "Leaving the Cradle - Apollo 8" series of DVDs from the NASA archives, you can (repetitively!) watch the launch from a variety of viewpoints.
In every view, you are amazed to see a shower of ice and who-knows-what kind of debris as these huge missiles shook themselves off and flung themselves into orbit.
Who decided on a delicate shuttle, anyway?
wow, you are a freak!
Could it be that the actual camera data may have been resized, cropped and/or compressed? nah, never happens.
on the main mission site linked to in the article, they have an mpeg posted of the seperation
/ sts-121/mpg/srb_fd01h_ra.mpg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle
Where are we going, and why are we in this hand cart?
Let's see... we just launched humans INTO SPACE in a vehicle we designed and constructed, and that's all you can say? I'm sorry, but I feel really sad for you.
--- witty signature
my logitech webcam has clearer imaging than the footage from these cameras
but your webcam isn't strapped onto a continuously exploding bomb hurtling through all layers of the atmosphere in a matter of minutes.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Person above me was too cowardly to sign in and say it. So I will say it for those who have their filters set at +1 or higher: You are a freak.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The SRB's never technically 'leave' the atmosphere so they can't re-enter. They are going pretty fast but not Mach 25 like the shuttle and station are doing on orbit. Maybe a few (2-4) Mach. Actually the shuttle goes quite slow while the SRB's are on because the atmosphere is so dense at low altitudes (the SRB's are only on for just over 2 minutes) because dynamic pressure builds up quickly ( a linear function of air density and a square of velocity ) so you keep your velocity at a fair clip until the atmosphere thins and then speed up. Long story short the SRB's aren't going that fast, and the cameras are in a good housing. The cam itself is made by these guys
Try THAT on a sound stage in a desert!!
Beautiful video. I imagine the part after it separates would be awesome drunk.
"This food is problematic."
I am amazed at how these cameras manage to survive and produce a steady image from the atmosphere, into space, and back. This leads me to believe that instead of using foam insulation, we should cover the entire shuttle in cameras.
It is too bad they can't sell more rides. [J]
I swear nasa has some footage of nessy caught in a net at the end there.
About 10 minutes into it I found myself thinking, "Man! I hope they pull me out soon, I can't hold my breath much longer."
That I would have had to hold my breath through the whole liftoff sequence didn't really bother me - just the being under water part.
Are you kidding? You can see the curvature of the earth by the time they separate (T+3 min). You can still see the curvature as they tumble back to earth, even sections of continents, weather patterns, etc. The Shuttle and SRBs are definitely very high up when they separate. As other people have already pointed out, the SRBs don't go with the shuttle all the way into orbit, just give the orbiter a boost through most of the atmosphere.
The webcams are on there to monitor the shuttle going up. They put video clips on the internet for all the people who like to see shuttle launches (how much closer can you get, sitting on the SRB?)
Besides, the shuttle is getting mothballed in 2010, the CEV will be in service (hopefully) in 2014. There is no support needed so long as shuttle tiles aren't being whacked off by falling foam/ice. (And if we do have problems, Griffin himself said he'd mothball the program early)
NASA good, naysayers bad.
Has this stuff really become that run-of-the-mill to you?
There's been over 100 successful shuttle missions. Every single one of these is astonishing to me, even though I may agree with plenty of the criticisms of the programme. There's a visceral joy in seeing these things do their stuff -- ageing, expensive and cumbersome though they may be.
I cannot for a second understand how [i]anything[/i] to do with spaceflight -- even the simplest satellite deployment -- could be classed as mundane.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
After the separation (at ~2:58, as mentioned), the booster tumbles and tumbles, but you can see a spot of light (to the lower left of the Sun) that I think is the departing shuttle, and on the horizon to the lower right of the Sun you can make out a slightly twisted, vertical puff of "cloud" sticking far above the normal clouds -- the smoke plume from the shuttle takeoff.
:-)
Once back in the thicker atmosphere, the tumbling lessens, and eventually you see the parachute deploy and splashdown. Very cool.
Don't stare at the tumbling phase for too long at full screen. You might get nauseated
Neat-o.
And then you tout Theora to solve the problem. Are there even 500,000 people in the world who use Theora?
Let's try something like, oh, I don't know, MPEG-2 maybe?
Did anyone see that string-looking thing coming from the atmosphere? I saw it during the fall back to Earth. Might that be the trail of smoke from the launch?
Whatever it was, it was awesome.
Bullish Machine Tzar
Did NASA recover the camera for analysis? I was amazed by this silent footage even though it was long.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"Troll Tuesday" is tomorrow.
Well, from a NASA website.
About 125 seconds after launch and at an altitude of about 150,000 feet, the SRB's burn out and are jettisoned from the ET. The jettison command originates from the Orbiter, and jettison occurs when the forward and aft attach points between the SRB's and ET are blown by explosive charges.
28 miles may not be space, per se, but it is pretty damn high.
Interestingly, watch closely, a couple minutes in, you can see pressure waves form small clouds on the leading edge of the shuttle as it breaks the sound barrier. *Very* cool stuff...
SRB's separate at ~150,000 feet, so the sky should be pretty black at that height. Also, they probably have a fair amount of vertical velocity at the separation point so should take a while even before they begin to descend. Without doing any back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, it seems plausable that they could take a few minutes to land. Unless you know better than I do what the view is like from 150,000 feet, and that's why you're disputing it.
FYI, the camera landed in the water. Unless Texas has a disproportionate number of hydroponic ranches, I don't think NASA will be fielding too many of these complaints.
The shuttle is stronger than nearly any plane on earth. However, the velocities, energy and stresses involved are far greater than any plane on earth faces.
A 1.5 lb chunk of foam travelling at >500 mph generates at least 10,000 lbs of force/sq ft when it impacts. There are not many materials that can survive that and still be light enough to fly into space with a decent sized cargo. At least, not at a reasonable cost (and many think the shuttle's cost is unreasonable as it is). It is simply a hazard of space travel - our ability to propel exceeds our ability to deflect.
In space, things are even worse. There are nuts and bolts, paint chips and various debris flying around in orbit at thousands of miles an hour. It is a miracle nothing has been destroyed yet by them.
-
The footage might have been good for the first 50 readers.. now it streams at a trickle thanks to the slashdot effect.
Since it is going at about 1/100 frames per minute though I'm sure in the next day or so i'll be able to see those pressure waves that mr. sound barrier was talking about ; )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Pertinent video: http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.down load.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/right _aft_srb_camera.asx
Are you talking about that flurry of what looks like tentacles at around 7:38? I think you might have been seeing the lines from the parachute hitting the water and flowing past the camera.
Just 'cause your webcam doesn't get out much doesn't mean his doesn't.
Developers: We can use your help.
Probably a lot of people already know this, but you can download (instead of just watching it in streaming) WMV files with a "mms://" URI under Linux using MPlayer.
Just do something like this:
This is useful if you have a connection too slow for live streaming or you simply want to do something with the downloaded file.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
If I could just download the copy of /right_forward_srb_camera.wmv being mirrored through (funky.dns.tricks.akamaistream.net), it would probably have stayed up longer.
But a certain DRM-infected media player doesn't welcome the SaveAs menu overlord. After all, how dare anyone think of downloading something (at whatever bitrate their client, or the overloaded server, might support) to your hard drive where you could play it back at your leisure, when you can just download the same content, asking the central server for permission over and over again, every time you wanted to see something?
Streaming video blows goats. The video's probably in the public domain. Put up a goddamn downloadable .MOV, .MPG, or yes, even a .WMV link. But enough of the streaming video, and don't even get me started on a site that requires a Javashit popup to load the goddamn .asx file that points to the streaming video in the first place. Web design ain't rocket science -- it's EASIER than rocket science. Last time I checked, there were a few folks at NASA who have the requisite skills, right?
To give credit to rocket scientists who do get it, check out how the JPL folks working on the Cassini mission handle videos. You know before you click, not just what format it's in, but how big it's gonna be, and you get to save everything to disk.
Earth to NASA: Dump the streaming video, at least for public domain content.
Come on, posting that actualy footage from a launch is not real from a user called "CrazyTalk"? Doesn't that sort of give the whole thing away?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, just after it enteres the water it spends quite a while looking at something that looks an awful like like a slightly distorted head of Elvis as seen in side profile (sideburns and hair and all). Take a look.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yep, SRB seperation generally happens over the Atlantic, somewhere within range of the launch site so the ships can sail out and recover them (and so that in the event of an emergency landing at KSC or Spain, we don't send some very powerful rockets at Morocco). Now, those living in the Indian Ocean may see ET debris, but it re-enters at a very high altitude and disintegrates fairly quickly (the foam tends to shed fairly quickly before re-entry, so imagine during).
There's a LOT of neat stuff in there. For example:
1:30-1:40 Mach transition (breaking the sound barrier - watch the nose)
2:39 a rather visible bit of debris flies right past the camera
2:58 separation from the orbiter/tank stack
3:59 as the booster tumbles, you can briefly spot the shuttle as a bright dot
5:18 you can see the smoke plume thru the upper atmosphere
7:13 some debris goes past the booster camera
7:17 you can see a shroud (parachute) line falling
7:25 you can very briefly see a chute
7:30 water entry
7:40 the chute falls into the water
8:00 as the booster floats, the chutes and shroud lines are clearly visible around the booster
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
OK I get tired of watching the shuttle go up forevr and figured the video was spliced so I jump to the end to see th good stuff and find the camera is underwater!?! then I realized that it just survided the slpash down and I missed the good stuff. awesome shots though the most spectacular space footage I have ever seen.
WTF?
Just in case NASA changes the links/Web page. Right Forward SRB Camera. This one shows the space shuttle launching from the launch pad, to space, and then crashing into the water (not going underwater like the other video).
:)
Amazing videos! If there are any more, then please share!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Check it out just before 3 minutes. That separation from the Shuttle is an awesome scene. No sci-fi movie can touch it, wow!!
Also the way the horizon starts to curve and half of it turning dark... great stuff.
http://fire-eyes.org/temp/sts-121/
let me know if you can find any others, especially if you can find the full high quality version (one of the mpegs above is a small clip of the high quality version).
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Seriously, what kind of tard doesn't think of the above as an explaination. Let's distribute full resolution uncompressed high speed video to everyone on the web!
...and you've eaten your pen. simply stunning.
That video's fake, just like the 'Moon Landing'
From TFV (video):
1) where are the stars, stars should be visible in the sky
2) why does the camera image shake so much? being one with the launch vehicle, the shuffle/tank images should appear stationary
3) after unstaged separation, the stage appears to rotate around only 2 axes. Any physicist will tell you this is mathematically impossible (P way way low, same as 1-axis). Any undergrad that can spell 'Lagrangian' and 'Hamiltonian' will tell you as much. The rotation should be in 3 axes (which is something that most (all?) special effects guys either do not know, or forget)
4) clouds appear to visibly move in the Earth snapshots == FUD on this timescale
5) look at the pixelated wing. Either they use some cheap-ass camera, or the model is tiny
I can go on but you get the point, hopefully.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I noticed it first in the 4:59 minute mark then again at 5:07, 5:17, 5:47, 5:59. There is a strange trail or whisp on the horizon... anyone think this is the con-trail or what? It's amazing to me that a camera can survive this trip attached to the side of SRB's but the tiles can't survive the trip up.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
That's harsh!
an ill wind that blows no good
Can someone tell me what those random dark patches on the underside of the shuttle are? Is that deliberate coloration, or are those missing tiles? Or something else entirely?
I thought Macs 'just worked'. Did the commercial lie?
That thing obviously killed a large jellyfish when it hit the water.
We must end this MURDEROUS space program NOW, before it is too late for the planet!
What? That was the parachute?
Uh. Oh, never-mind.
Whoa, calm down. I was simply saying that SRB seperation happens over the ocean so they'll splash down and not come to an explosive thud in Morocco (about where they would go if they were released later). Spain is the trans-Atlantic landing site, so if we needed to abort and land there, the SRBs would be ejected so that they would still splash down and NOT hit Morocco or something.
Go easy on the "all Americans are racist idiots who think any country with sand is an enemy" juice.
And yes, I knew of the long history between the US and Morocco. It's one of the more interesting parts of American history that one of our first military acts (post-independence) was in the Mediterranean (we've never been able to leave the area alone for long), with, among others, the newly completed USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides") fighting pirates of Tripoli (thus "...to the shores of Tripoli..."), Algiers, Tunis, and, yes, Morocco. Morocco wasn't really involved in the war, it seems, and is just mentioned because of some alleged support of the pirates and the three other city-states. Much (if not all) of the action was against Tripoli. Morocco remained friendly to the US, albeit strained, through the conflict.
Shorter then any hollywood film I've seen, and it moved me more then any film I've ever seen. The launch probably cost the same. If this isn't proof of the results a small percentage of our bomb making taxes can provide, I don't think you're a sane person.
So next time before you start to accuse somebody of making negative comments about your country remember the three steps of replying on slashdot.
- Read
- Think
- Post
You need to work on numbers 1 & 2.Not all Americans are racist/ignorant
-----
Disclaimer: I am not an american, and do not usually defend them. However, this was a particularly bad case.
That's what I want to know. All the SRB's I'm familiar with are essentially just tubes with a nozzle on the end, so what's to stop the water from heading up the nozzle and filling the thing in? From the head-down camera, the thing actually eventually ends up sitting straight up and down in the water! I'd like to know how they managed that...
I don't think these security words are convenient anymore, not when mine was "fished"
...is the video looking down from the booster, showing the amazing launch and then splashdown:n load.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/right _aft_srb_camera.asx
http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.dow
Yes, it has been resized, cropped and compressed. Someone else posted a link to an MPEG file from NASA that was twice the resolution. Apparently it was from an analog NTSC source. It was full of interlacing artifacts, and it had black bars on both sides. Whoever released the WMV apparently just discarded one set of fields and halved the horizontal resolution instead of deinterlacing. They also cropped to remove the black bars and compressed it to a pretty low bitrate.
After the separation I started whooping it up like Slim Pickens.
Slashdot: giving you hilarious displays of proud and loud ignorance since....
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Just amazing videos ...
This one has a really good view of the re-entry. It's like a roller coaster ride!
http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.down load.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/srb_s ep.asx
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Thank you for these downloadable video files! :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
http://sdp.ppona.com/
The video is very cool, and the first thought that went through my head is "I wonder how much NASA would charge if that were an amusement ride?" There's a T-shirt or two to be sold and worn in this adventure that reads "I fell from outer space!", "Yes mom, I am an alien!", or "I blew chunks at 5 miles up!"
Here are the links to the two SRB cameras (hopefully this works):
.torrent.
right_aft_srb_camera.mov.torrent
right_forward_srb_camera.mov.torrent
There is something wrong with my MIME types, so save the file as and, if necessary, rename to
Geez, my 1975 Nova had a better paint job (alas, it was not able to exceed 45MPH, much less Mach 1)...
He-he, you are a funny stupid person.
I dunno about webcams, but a few of my console joypads have survived Mach 25...
Sorry about that... I need to dial back on the talk radio - both left & right.
And thanks for expanding that cool bit of US history.
re
Ah, talk radio. Yeah didn't realize you were under the influence. :) You should something that makes fun of both sides, like "The Daily Show" or "The Onion" It's sad, but there's often more (true) facts in those two than in many other media.
I thought I was the only person who felt this way. Well met!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I love the Daily Show... but since I don't have cable, I only get to watch it when I go drinking with a friend of mine who has Tivo. It's particularly sad that real information has to come through the form of comedy and satire. But then, maybe it's always been that way.
:)
Then again, it's probably safest to check out audiobooks from the library... time to work through Harry Potter again..
The cameras are inside the housing of the Solid Rocket Boosters and as you can see they do not come out of the two SRBs during their decent through the atmosphere. They fall in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida and are retrieved by NASA ships to be brought back to KSC.
Ugh, makes me wonder about the fate of the Challenger astronauts, if they experienced the same long fall. Shudder.
-- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Looks like CG to me. At 3:01, where is the other booster? At 3:03-3:05, a fuzzy object appears moving straight away from the shuttle. Where is the object in previous frames?
Realize something, the object does not appear at the edge of the frame. It appears in the middle of the frame.
Just like any number of WTC crash videos.
It just doesn't seem right without sound. They should dub in the NASA mission control dialogue.
- Public domain content (maybe?)
- Torrents
I think it's pretty clear cut.I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
What is the long black contrail seen in the downfacing camera at 2:58? It's not the shuttle, because the camera is on the shuttle and the black contrail is miles away.
Also, what is the object seen at least 3 times as the camera rotates? It is most visible at 3:32 and resembles the object someone called a "lens flare" in the upfacing video. It is too solid to be a lens flare here.
the link is on this page...
d ia/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/multime
The rear-facing SRB view is more interesting in that you can see the ground pull away. And the camera stays above the water once the booster lands (they are bottom-heavy so the top part stays out of the water).
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
There was sweet HD launch coverage by HDNET (I think they had 14 HD cameras focused on the launch) then they switched to the nasa cam after it was out of view from the HDCAMS, pretty cool launch and super clear!!
There was some comedian on the old Dr. Katz cartoon who had a bit something along the lines of: we're all such whiny babies, complaining about not getting our packet of peanuts or whatever on a flight. When did we get so jaded? It's A MIRACLE. You're FLYING! They shouldn't even have to advertise anything except "We can FLY!!".
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
To everyone who responded to my troll - thanks for playing.
This stuff is great. It is the blase feeling it has that makes it a kick to watch. Like footage from a security camera except this one is going into orbit.
The thing that surprised me the most was how fast it leaves the atmosphere and how fast the booster returns. Is this footage real time (I didn't RTFA)? If it is then even at high speed it is still amazing how quickly the sky goes black. The atmosphere really is like the skin on an onion.
Engineering the boosters must've been a real challenge. They go from land, to supersonic flight, to near space, into free fall, then land in salt water. Then they can still be reused! Quite a trip.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
There's been over 100 successful shuttle missions. Every single one of these is astonishing to me, even though I may agree with plenty of the criticisms of the programme. There's a visceral joy in seeing these things do their stuff -- ageing, expensive and cumbersome though they may be.
The coolest thing I saw during the launch was watching the flight control surfaces and the orbiter's main nozzles moving around in the final few seconds before launch. Very strange to see nozzles that large moving around that quickly.
My only wish was that the streaming video could've been of a higher quality then 150kbs... that worked fine as long as things were stationary, but wasn't enough bandwidth to deal with the more dynamic scenes.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
We've gotten a lot of e-mail like this, so I thought it was worth addressing in a forum where folks who take a real interest in the technology spend time.
We stream video clips, rather than making them available for downloading, to manage our bandwidth usage. We have a fixed-priced contract with Akamai to provide content delivery, including HTML, RealMedia, QuickTime streaming and some Windows streams. That contract includes some hard caps on bandwidth, and though I give a lot of credit to Akamai for working with us on those caps, they are a business in the end. (Yahoo! provides most of our Windows streams as part of a separate agreement.) As you might imagine, during shuttle missions and other high-visibility events, we got a lot of traffic, the bulk of which is for live video streams. During last week's launch, we had more than a million webcast streams go out on the 4th, with a peak of more than 257,000 concurrent streams at launch. We were pushing data out at 52 gbps.
We continue to have at least 10,000 streams going out during the mission, even in the deep overnight, ramping up for major events like spacewalks. Streaming the video clips makes more efficient use of our bandwidth, as the user can watch the whole thing or cut it off when she feels like it. If the latter, our servers go on to other things. Add it all up, and we have to be fairly careful about managing available bandwidth. We do have some clips available for download at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/index.ht ml
Perhaps it's not the most elegant or perfect solution, but given finite resources and the need to be cross-platform, 508 accessible and as timely as possible, it's optimal, especially for the broad general audience that www.nasa.gov primarily serves. The alternative would be to have a lot less video available.
Cheers,
Brian Dunbar
Internet Services Manager
NASA Public Affairs
Hmmm, let me get back to you on that one. People have talked about the weaponization of space for decades; why not start now?
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.