Had good coverage on many satellites including Nasa TV on Intelsat 701 and UP4 on Asiasat 2.
Nasa TV on I701 now replaying views taken from all the different cameras. Great stuff. Of course Nasa TV will be buzzing with shuttle activity for the next 12 days at least.
That was so cool. I watched a bit of NASA TV until the TV stations started showing stuff. Then I was channel hopping between 7 and 9 to get the best stuff. A few minutes before launch 7 had some cool live footage while 9 was talking. But during ascent, 7 had an ex astronaut talking over the NASA TV man! Big no no so I quickly switched. Stupid NBC.
Since the TV stations returned to crap TV I've had NASA TV on. Mostly quite boring but there was some good launch footage from various cameras on the launch pad.
It feels silly having such strong feelings while watching it take off. Perhaps it's because I was watching the Columbia reentry on NASA TV when it died.
That was absolutely awesome, set the alarm for 12:30am and got my son Jacob (6) and my wife up to watch it with me.
As beren said, lump in the throat stuff.. it was my first "real" live shuttle launch experience.. I remember previous ones, but not with the same excitement as I wasn't fully into astronomy at that time.
Jacob loved it, i'm sure he'll talk about it at school today during "news" time.
I didn't record it but the rear camera showed a LOT of ice falling off during launch. I guess it's always going to be a concern. In view of that it's amazing they got away with it for so long without tile damage in critical areas before Columbia.
They have to be ever so careful with so many factors a Mars mission seems like a 1000 years away from here. I don't think we are going to keep the time frame of Star Trek or the ease at which their shuttles launch!
Maybe if they started painting the external tank again the insulation might stay intact.They never had a problem with the painted tanks, they looked better too.
The paint weighed 500 pounds and was discontinued in their weight saving program to reduce launch costs and increase payload weight.
Their moon mars and beyond program seems like a sci-fi dream at the moment.
A couple more pics that have been released by the media/nasa. shows the tile damage thanks to the new camera mounted on the main external tank.
also showing a orange chunk coming off aswell... dare say this is fromthe external tank and not the shuttle, but can only wait and see what the experts say.
and as for our record of a night.... its always good to break recordds... something we can aim for in the furture
It gives you a totally new perspective in how fast the shuttle really goes. You can see the speed really start to kick in around 30seconds after launch.
I'd love to see that Rowena, does anyone know of any other media players that play realplayer format? Or if it (the movie) can be downloaded in another format?
A nice free alternative to installing Real Player (ugh) is to download Real Player Alternative, which uses the Real codec compiled into Media Player Classic.
There is also a Quicktime alternative that works great called, you guessed it, Quicktime Alternative. Great for those Kodak digital camera owners who like to take small videos with their cameras.
