Atlantis' Acrobats: One backflip and a dock to ISS

Watch the shuttle perform a back flip in space as it approaches the International Space Station. At about 600 feet below the station, the shuttle flips bass ackwards, exposing its underside to the station.

As the shuttle bellies up to the station, the station crew has about 9 minutes to snap up as many photos as it can. The digital snapshots are downlinked to Earth to check for chips and dings on the surface of the tiles, which act as the vehicle's heat shield.

Tiles range in thickness from a quarter-inch to four-and-a-half inches thick. The space shuttle leading edges and the nose cone are made of reinforced carbon-carbon material capable of withstanding temperatures up to 3,600 degrees, now that's a hottie!

The Shuttle Atlantis, which launched Feb. 7, 2007 and flipped upside down before docking to the station Feb. 9, has 24,000 thermal protection tiles.

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[dalesalsa]

Who is the woman talking... she sounds pretty damn sexy.. I don't know.. something about her.

Also how fucking cool is that guy doing the space shuttle flip...

Hey what did you do today?

Ah.. Flipped a space shuttle... It was alright... it was only at 17,500mph.

[Desmond Bower]

What did you do today ??? ohh nothing special .... just back flipped the space shuttle at 17,500mph ....... what did you do today

[Gary Williams]

no it's not. It's NASA PAO. Not sure who but maybe Candrea Thomas

[MichaelSephiroth]

Where's the HD version of this, you can obviously see by the NASA logo that this is not the original version, just a reformatted low res version for public eyes -_-

[ublade82]

This is nothing, give me the keys and I'll show you some real tricks.

[Mosku94fin]

now do the same thing with a whole station, for the fun of it



[Jugulator4]

I'm not quite shure but i would guess it's Eileen Collins.

[John Smith]

i want a BARREL ROLL! >.<

[xmrtuxedox99]

Your "barrel roll" is actually called an alerial-roll. And this is doing a back-flip not an alerial-roll.

[John Smith]

DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL ROLL!DO A BARREL

[Sarge Rho]

Gravity is the very reason why they stay in orbit. While it constantly pulls them down, they move so fast that they never actually hit the ground. Basically they are falling in a bottomless pit.