Page content and layout © 1996-2001 Michael Grabois and Astra Enterprises.Last updated: August 13, 2002
Compilation copyright © 1997-2002 by Michael R. Grabois. This document may be freely redistributed in various electronic media (including, but not limited to, e-mail, Usenet, and the World Wide Web) in its complete and unmodified form. It may not be reproduced for profit in commercial outlets (such as, but not limited to, CD-ROMs and books) without prior written consent from the author. Other use requires written permission of the author. Except as where noted in the individual answer, all material was written by the compiler of this document. Standard disclaimer: this is in no way officially endorsed by NASA or any of its contractor companies.
Please submit all corrections, additions, and suggestions to WizardImps@hotmail.com.
[With inputs from Will Marchant]
The shuttle flying overhead looks like a very bright star, moving slowly across the sky. Depending on the payload, you might also see any satellites that were deployed, too. The best way to locate the shuttle or Mir is to visit one of the pages below, which will list sighting opportunities for various cities around the world.
Also, Alan Bose has a nice pamphlet called "There's a Satellite in your Backyard!" available from Satellite Spotters, P.O. Box 366, Itasca, IL 60143. Enclose US$1.00 for postage and handling.
If you want to try to calculate the times yourself, you'll need the current orbital elements and a tracking program. The orbital elements can be found at
Many different tracking programs can be found at
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There are a number of sites on the internet that offer streaming video of NASA TV: RealVideo, NetShow, CUSeeMe, Java, etc.:
Streaming NASA TV in RealVideo (requires 28.8 connection):
Streaming NASA TV in Windows Media (requires 28.8 connection):
Other:
Additionally, you can see some real-time environmental and systems data from the EGIL and the EECOM flight controllers point of view:
Live tracking data:
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Maximum altitude depends on weight (lighter is better) and propellant (more is better). Of course, there's a tradeoff between the two. The highest shuttle flights have been the Hubble Space Telescope missions, all operating at around 330 nautical miles, or about 380 statute miles. STS-82, the second HST repair mission, boosted the HST up to an orbit of 335 x 325 nm in February 1997.
Maximum inclination depends on range safety limits. The northernmost range lines limit the shuttle inclination to 57 degrees; this prevents the shuttle from overflying North Carolina. However, on STS-36 in 1990, the shuttle was allowed to bend some rules and do an unusual dog-leg trajectory en route to a 62 degree trajectory to deploy a Defense Department satellite, passing over Newfoundland.
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[With info from Will Marchant]
If you are an amateur radio operator (easy to become one, at least in the USA. Call 1-800-32NEWHAM for information), you can talk to the space travellers of the various nations.
SAREX, the Space Amateur Radio Experiment (formerly known as Shuttle Amateur...) is a long-running program to use amateur radio equipment on board NASA's Space Shuttle, the Russian Mir space station, and the International Space Station to involve students in exchanging questions and answers with astronauts on orbit. More than 200 schools have participated to date. It has also been used to conduct communications experiments with amateur radio operators on the ground.
Unfortunately, you can't send an e-mail directly to the shuttle crew. All e-mail to and from the shuttle passes through Mission Control first. There are, however, places you can e-mail Mission Control and some payloads during missions (check the mission specific web pages) to ask questions. Some of those questions will be manually relayed up to the crew over the regular NASA communications channels. For amateur radio enthusiasts, though, since SAREX was flown for the last time aboard STS-93 in July 1999 (with SAREX you can bounce digital packets off of the equipment), they don't do amateur radio from shuttle any more, as they are transitioning over to ISS completely.
When it was occupied, Mir had an electronic bulletin board system connected to amateur radio where you could try to leave e-mail for the Mir crew, who were VERY active with voice contacts. However, the ham radio gear on Mir is currently turned off since it is unoccupied and slated for destruction in the next couple of years. There are rumors that the gear will be operational for any salvage crew, but that's tentative at best. If Mir does get a reprieve then ham operations will probably continue for the duration.
The first set of ham radio hardware for the ISS -- the project is known as ARISS, Amateur Radio on the ISS -- launched on STS-106 (September 2000). It was left in the ISS and was activated by the Expedition One crew. They used the 2-meter "Sirius" antennas on the FGB until the amateur radio external antennas were delived in 2001. After a spacewalk to install them, operations expanded to the 70cm as well as the 2m bands. Slow scan television (i.e. pictures up and down) is also expected to be available soon. The ISS crewmembers will have a full packet email system, accesible to anyone with a standard 1200 baud amateur radio setup.
For more on amateur radio, check out:
For amateur radio on the shuttle, Mir, or ISS, check out:
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[From the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide by Steven Pietrobon]
The Space Shuttle transmits on three frequency bands: UHF, S-Band, and Ku-Band. The UHF frequencies are simple AM voice and are very easy to copy. These frequencies are used for launch and landing operations, EVA operations, and as an additional voice downlink when other channels are in use for the current ground station has no S-Band capability. The frequencies in use are:
296.800 MHz : Air-to-ground, or Orbiter to suit
259.700 MHz : Air-to-ground, or suit to Orbiter
279.000 MHz : Suit-to-Orbiter, or suit-to-suit
243.000 MHz : Standard military aircraft emergency frequency
The S-Band system is one of the primary Orbiter downlink bands. The voice channels are digital slope delta modulated and are multiplexed in with the rest of the Orbiter telemetry and is very difficult to copy. Much of the downlink TV is on S-Band also, but is wideband FM and should be easy to copy. The frequencies are:
2287.500 MHz - Primary digital downlink
2250.000 MHz - Wideband FM with either main engine analog telemetry during launch, or TV during orbit operations.
Shuttle audio is retransmitted by a number of amateur radio stations. See the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide for a complete listing:
More information on frequencies and air-to-ground repeaters can be found at
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[co-written by Richard David Glueck]
The shuttle toilet (Waste Containment System, or WCS) is a pretty complex piece of apparatus. It consists of a contoured seat, a safety bar which the astronaut uses to hold him/herself in place, and toe restraints. The Astronaut urinates into a personal recepticle that is attached to a hose and drawn in with a mild vacuum. Males and females have their own recepticle, obviously modifed to meet physiological requirements. Urine is held in a holding tanks, then dumped overboard at an appropriate time (hense, "the constellation Urion"). Urine dump is supposed to be an incredibly beautiful sight to see, as the droplets crystalize immediatly in the environment of space.
Solid fecal waste is similarly drawn by an air current into a bowl, know affectionatly as a slinger. After closing the toilet, it is shredded mechanically and vacuum dried against the walls of the toilet. The water is stored for later dumping, and the solids are contained for disposal on the ground. There is a vacuum vent line that constantly sucks a small amount of air overboard, and this air flow keeps odors out of the area.
Shuttle toilets are located immediatly inside the hatch. There is very little room on the shuttle mid-deck, so when a crew member need to use the facility, the others try to afford that person as much quiet and personal space as can be given to them, though there is a privacy curtain that can be drawn around the WCS area. Look, you have to be a professional to be an astronaut!
For more info on the workings of the WCS, go to:
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Some astronauts have compared the liftoff to a very loud and shaky train ride. But many have not either spoken publicly or written about it until recently, when a number of NASA astronauts aboard Mir sent down letters about life on Mir between 1996-1998. First was Shannon Lucid, speaking about what it's like, in May 1996. Jerry Linenger wrote a series of open letters detailing what life on Mir is like, for his 14-month old son. All of the NASA astronaut Mir residents, wrote accounts of their stay aboard Mir and participated in oral histories. These diaries may be found at:
Once the ISS was up and running, several of the residents aboard wrote their own series of open letters:
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No, that's really just an urban legend. In fact, it's very difficult to see the Great Wall of China from the low-Earth orbit that the shuttle flies in, much less from the Moon. Astronauts and cosmonauts in low Earth orbit can see the effects of man-made objects with the naked eye, such as wakes from ships, vegetation boundaries, etc., but the resolution of the naked eye is such that you generally can't see individual objects. With binoculars or a zoom lens for the camera, of course, you can see much more -- roads, stadiums, airports, cities, pyramids, etc.
Astronaut Andy Thomas wrote about what you can see from orbit while aboard the Russian space station Mir: "Evidence of human habitation is visible from low Earth orbit. Cities can be seen, although, surprisingly, they do not stand out readily. But we can make out their grid-like patterns of streets. In remote areas, certain roads and railway lines can be seen as faint lines across the Earth, such as the road through the rain forests of Brazil, and the long straight railway line crossing south western Australia, but generally these are too small to make out clearly. The fencing off of farm land into individual fields can also be made out, particularly in the Midwest of the U.S. and Canada. There is even one area in South America where they alternate their growing cycles on adjacent fields, giving rise to a very obvious checkerboard pattern. Of course, national boundaries do not stand out by themselves as on a map, but some national boundaries can be seen where there are different land usage policies in effect on each side of a border, giving rise to different surface texture or color. In this way the southern border of Israel can be made out, as can part of the division between the U.S. and Canada. The stories about the Great Wall of China being visible from space may be true, but I have yet to see it."
But from the Moon? No. Astronaut and moonwalker Alan Bean said "The only thing you can see from the moon is a beautiful sphere, mostly white (clouds), some blue (ocean), patches of yellow (deserts), and every once in a while some green vegetation. No man-made object is visible on this scale. In fact, when first leaving earth's orbit and only a few thousand miles away, no man-made object is visible at that point either."
For further information:
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Please submit all corrections, additions, and suggestions to WizardImps@hotmail.com.
Page content and layout © 1996-2001 Michael Grabois and Astra Enterprises.
Last updated: August 13, 2002