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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."
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?
agreed, I never understood why these guys choose the formats they do. Why not a simple mpg? (Honestly - why?)
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.
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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?
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?
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?
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."
feel better?
/ sts-121/mpg/srb_fd01h_ra.mpg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle
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.
just install the codecs for MPlayer. Unless you are too lazy ... worked for me last shuttle mission ...
Not to mention theora is still alpha software. Too new, still unproven, there is a perfectly good reason.
I swear people here whine so much about NASA it's unbelievable.
I'm convinced that the mind boggling variety of publicly available NASA footage, pictures and video will never be enough for some. You can watch live NASA tv in Realplayer, Quicktime, Windows Media, or Browse to Yahoo and watch it with their flash player.
As the geek I am, NASA is one of the few govermental agencies that I cherrish. If I want to know something about some planet, any planet, it's probabbly thanks to the work that NASA has done.
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.
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?
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
They recover the whole booster, not just the camera.
As I understand it they do reuse at least part of the booster for a number of launches.
Give it 36 hours.
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.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
How a large majority of the people visiting the site are probalby using windows, and therefore probably can view the video. And if they can instantly satisfy those requests without the user needing special software, then that's a large majority of the people taken care of instead of none. Of course, they could have just used mpeg which would have helped everyone. And I love how you argue "added expenses" and say that a library might be too far a way when you probably spent a good amount of money on the computer itself. What about a homeless man, isn't he entitled to watch the shuttle launch videos as well? By not dragging a TV down to his corner and letting him look at it, the government is requiring special access (access to a computer) to get at the information!
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.
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.
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.
Slashdot: giving you hilarious displays of proud and loud ignorance since....
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Sorry ... its this one:
n load.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/right _forward_srb_camera.asx
http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.dow
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
The heat shield tiles are designed to be reused for several missions. If they fail inspection after a mission, they are replaced prior to the next mission.
When they land tail first, the air(or gasses left over from combustion) gets trapped in the tube and this is what makes the SRB buoyant. I did notice from the rear camera view, that the SRB appears to almost get horizontal right after landing, but it still seems to remained pitched at such an angle that gas should still be contained inside. Then it settles in an upright orientation. Check this out: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/pdf/146685main _srb-et.pdf And: http://www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/undersea/srbnp/s rbnp.html
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
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.