Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

First Photos of the Reentry of the ATV "Jules Verne"

Posted by kdawson on from the down-in-flames-seventy-five-km-up dept.

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.

6 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Question about atmospheric friction by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At what speed do you have to travel in the atmosphere before the cooling effect of air rushing past is overtaken by the friction effect and you start heating up again? I remember reading that concorde used to heat up on the outside but subsonic airliners don't. Does it have anything to do with the speed of sound?

    1. Re:Question about atmospheric friction by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Wrong dimension - Concorde did expand, but lengthways (not to say it didnt expand widthways, it just didn't do it noticably).

      The flight engineers cap story is real - during the last flight of each Concorde at their retirement, each flight engineer placed his cap in the space between their console and the rear compartment bulkhead. The caps can be seen to this day, stuck there.

    2. Re:Question about atmospheric friction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Another example is the SR71 "Blackbird". It was designed so that all parts would fit perfectly only when it was very hot during flight. And since it lacked a heat resistant fuel containment seal, it would leak fuel in the ground until it took off, flew for some time to heat up and then it had to be refueled on air.

  2. Concorde widens during flight by juletre · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll reply to myself with a link, after I did some googling. It contains a picture of the hat-episode. (search in page for "hat in the seam")

    --
    "he, who has quotes in his signature, is a douche" - unknown.
  3. I'm curious... by apodyopsis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had a hunt on the net - but did not find anything.

    did *anybody* ever get hit by a falling satellite?

    or radiation damage?

    or property damage?

    anybody know?

  4. Wow ! by o'reor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The video of the re-entry is just beautiful !

    --
    In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.