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Post by Bill Thompson on May 16, 2006 14:04:42 GMT -4
This is the coolest shot of the International Space Station I have seen (click on the option to expand it full size and look at how cool the details are). We do not hear enough about this in the mainstream media nowdays. My family was thrilled when a Brazilian astronaut joined the crew. BTW, I ask people what the biggest news story was before 9-11-2001 and I never get an answer. I remember it was The International Space Station. If it was, it is good to dream of those days.
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Post by Kiwi on May 16, 2006 23:43:44 GMT -4
Cool piccy alright. Is there a caption which says what land is visible? It looks like the ISS is above a gulf in a desert area. The Heavens Above website www.heavens-above.com has a graph of the ISS's height over a period, showing the effect of the weak atmospheric drag on it, but no information about exactly how it is boosted to a higher orbit. Has anyone seen some info on that? It seems to me that those solar panels and other appendages couldn't take much acceleration, so orbit changes must be done fairly gently.
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Post by Bill Thompson on May 17, 2006 0:13:01 GMT -4
It is above the Caspian Sea.
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Post by gwiz on May 17, 2006 3:32:52 GMT -4
Has anyone seen some info on that? It seems to me that those solar panels and other appendages couldn't take much acceleration, so orbit changes must be done fairly gently. In the early days the core section used its own thrusters, but now manoeuvres are nearly always done with either Shuttle RCS thrusters of the Russian Progress supply ships system, both of which give very low accelerations. A recent attempt to test the thrusters on the Russian service module was abandoned because a cover over the thrusters couldn't be opened. The cover was blocked by a new antenna that had been fitted during an EVA.
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