rss Archives - Rainer Gerhards

2007-12-07

RSS rotating after shuttle launch scrub

After the shuttle launch scrub on December, 6th, the rotating service structure has been rotated back. This is done both to protect space shuttle Atlantis from the weather and also to allow technicians access to it. Troubleshooting is currently in progress and the next launch attempt is no earlier than Saturday, December, 8th.

And this one is from a slightly different perspective:

The animations were created from public NASA webcam images. To start the animations, you must press the (small…) play button on the lower left! I also have a higher resolution version at my personal web site. If you are interested in details, these are probably the ones you would like to look at.

2007-12-06

Rotating Service Structure retracted for Launch!

Over the night, the Rotating Service Structure (RSS) has been rotated away from space shuttle Atlantis to get it ready for its STS-122 mission launch.

The RSS is used for servicing the shuttle prior to launch. Tonight’s retraction was the final one in support for today’s launch to the international space station ISS. I created the animation based on public NASA webcam imaginary, which I animated later. The difference in retraction speed may either be actual small holds or just an artifact of NASA webcam updates (sometimes an update is missing). I have polled pictures once every minute. The whole retraction took roughly 50 minutes.

The retraction was originally scheduled for around 8pm ET and begun at almost that time. This, plus the absence of any bad news, makes me believe we still have a flawless processing flow for STS-122. The weather also still looks excellent, so I expect Atlantis to roar into space in about 13 and a half hours from now!

2007-10-12

Shuttle-Level view of RSS re-attachment now available..

I now also have created a video of the shuttle-level view of the rotating service structure re-attachment to the space shuttle. It unfortunately does not offer the same time resolution as the MLP-view, but I think it is still an interesting animation.

2007-10-12

Movie of Rotating Service Structure re-attached to Shuttle

Yesterday, I captured NASA public webcam images and created a small animation from them. It shows how the rotating service structure (RSS) is being reattached to space shuttle Discovery.

The RSS had to be rolled back to carry out the APU hotfire test, which was postponed to yesterday due to bad weather. I have not yet heard of any test results, but assume all went well.

The video is the ground-level MLP view, the actual space shuttle can not be seen. When the video starts, watch the shadows. You will see the RSS shadow before you see the RSS itself.

To watch the video, please go to my personal site – it is too big to fit into this blog’s theme. The link is:

RSS being re-attached to mobile launcher platform