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.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• atlantis
• shuttle
• backflip
• station
• nasa
• astronauts
• space
• ISS
• STS-122

[painandink37]

what a sexy voice

[CamiloSanchez1979]

i heard they watch a lot of youtube videos up there on the shuttle.

[tawe2006]

@EmpireLS56KW many thanks for the explanation. It's amazing what the human mind is capable of.

[EmpireLS56KW]

@tawe2006 The ISS is travelling at the same speed the shuttle needs to catch up for docking once they have caught up with each other, well go and figure its the same if I can run beside you without falling back. In fact both vehicles are in a kinder freefall effect and just look at the ground speeding past at 18,000feet per second! You still don’t think that’s fast!

[EmpireLS56KW]

2 people can't do the back flip!

This was a remarkable part of the phase to check the shuttle over and why it wasn’t put into the program years before could have saved Colombia and its crew.

[AnishZute]

@tawe2006 The shuttle is traveling very fast compares to the surface of the earth, but this video is from the International Space Station (ISS), which is 600 feet above the shuttle. They are both moving at the same velocity therefore the shuttle looks stationary. The shuttle is doing a backflip so that the crew on the ISS can take pictures of it's underside to check for damage to the heat-resistant tiling. Hope that helped!

[gavinwell]

I'm surprised everything didn't fall out of the shuttle when it went upside-down. #sarcasm

[extrenix]

the shuttle looks like a duke nukem 3D sprite lolol

[adzyb69]

@mewsez lol! Ergh that is not the earth rotating that is the ISS and the Shuttle travelling around the earth, they move way faster than the earth rotates

[zploek]

one inch resolution and we get 240p???? NO FAIR!!!

[Grohowiak]

@painandink37 yep. You can basically fall in love without seeing the person :)

[njdevil281]

@tawe2006 They are looking at it from the ISS