Three minutes and 22 seconds after liftoff, Discovery will havemoved out to a point 443 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral and will haveclimbed to an altitude of 283,536 feet (53.7 miles).? It will be here that theshuttle will be high enough to see the sun emerge from beyond the distant curveof the eastern horizon.? For those watching from Florida northeast to theCarolinas, thanks to that reflected sunlight, the orbiter and its orangeexternal tank will be shining against a still semi-dark sky and should suddenlyappear to get much brighter, perhaps even surpassing Venus in brilliance as itraces quickly across the heavens.?įor those living along the Middle Atlantic and Northeast U.S.coast, the first view of Discovery will likely be of a very bright "movingstar" moving up from the southern horizon, that might appear to graduallyfade into the background of the brightening twilight sky, since from theseregions, the angle of reflected sunlight on the shuttle will diminish as itmoves rapidly to the east-northeast.? The bright star Sirius brieflystreaks through the scene giving a sense of scale and brightness to theshuttle's glow.īut this flight will have a unique bonus. Byrd shot video of the shuttle fromVirginia after a November 2000 night launch. Based on previous night missions, the brightness should be at leastequal to magnitude -2 rivaling Sirius, the brightest star in brilliance.Observers who train binoculars on the shuttle should be able to see its tinyV-shaped contrail. 9, 2006 (the STS-116 mission).Īfter the solid rocket boosters are jettisoned, Discovery will bevisible for most locations by virtue of the light emanating from its three mainengines. For an example of what all this lookslike from Florida, see videoof a night launch made by Rob Haas from Titusville, Fla.,on Dec. The brilliant light emitted by the twosolid rocket boosters will be visible for the first 2 minutes and 3 seconds ofthe launch out to a radius of some 510 miles from the Kennedy Space Center ? anarea covering more than three times the size of Texas.ĭepending on where you are located relative to Cape Canaveral,Discovery will become visible anywhere from a few seconds to just over 2minutes after it leaves Pad 39-A. In the southeast United States, depending on a viewer's distancefrom Cape Canaveral, Fla., the "stack" (shuttle orbiter, externaltank and solid rocket boosters) can be easily followed thanks to the fieryoutput of the solid rocket boosters. If you're positioned near the edge of a viewing circle, theshuttle will barely come above the horizon and could possibly be obscured bylow clouds or haze. Although at Cape Canaveralsunrise does not come until 46 minutes later, this is not considered a true "night"launch, since morning twilight will be well advanced and the eastern sky willalready be noticeably bright with the approach of sunrise, though NASAofficials have said it meets the technical guidelines for a nightshuttle launch.īut it still should be dark enough for some of the brighter starsto be visible, as well as the planet Jupiter which will be near the easternhorizon.Īs has been the case with other launches to the ISS, Monday'sliftoff will bring the shuttle's path nearly parallel to the U.S. To reach the space station, Discovery must be launched whenEarth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the station's orbit.For mission STS-131, this will happen in the middle of a 10 minute launchwindow at 6:21:22 a.m. As a consequence of the two and a half week delay, Discovery's originalearly afternoon launch time was pushed back to before sunrise. Docking is set forearly Sunday morning, followed the very next day by the launch of shuttleDiscovery. Thethree new crewmembers successfully blasted off from Russia's BaikonurCosmodrome aboard a Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft earlier today. In addition, NASA wanted to avoid having a shuttleat the space station when the next Russian Soyuz transport arrives in early April. Originallyscheduled to liftoff during early afternoon, Discovery's launch date slippedfrom March 18 to April 5 because of an unusual cold snap in Florida thatdelayed launch preparations. But should the upcoming launch of Discovery ? itsnext-to-last planned mission ? go off on schedule next Monday morning, itsvisibility might be enhanced by sunlight reflecting off both the orbiter andits orange external fuel tank a rather unique occurrence! On those occasions when a shuttle has been launched in the dark ofnight, its visibility was due primarily to the bright yellow-orange glow of itsmain rocket engines.
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