New images offer wealth of shuttle insight

James Oberg NBC News space analyst

HOUSTON - Camera views from the space shuttle Discovery showed some spectacular scenes during launch — and some alarming ones as well. Pieces big and small fell away from the structure. Strange flares and shimmering auras gleamed against black space. With more than a hundred cameras and millions of megabits of visual data, we are seeing things we’ve never seen before.

In the absence of any other anomalies in the silk-smooth countdown and launch, media attention focused on these visual "funnies." But calm is called for, at least for now. The right people are already worried — the engineers on the NASA shuttle team.

It’s their job to be worried, and outside observers need only worry if the space team members fail to do so — because bitter experience has taught that unworried space workers grow complacent, make judgment errors and set up conditions for the loss of spaceships and astronauts.

A further caution: Imaging systems, by their nature, are biased and incomplete. They can only see things that are there. It is up to human beings to fill in the blanks with the things that are NOT seen, and the significantly different "big picture" that this wider perspective provides.

For example, as Discovery rocketed toward space, the external television camera near the front end of the belly tank stared back down between the tank and the fragile tiled underside of the shuttle. The Florida coastline came into view, and its roadways and airfields were laid out on what looked like a map. But suddenly on the flat background I noticed a very un-maplike visual feature. A thick black line was extending to the left from the area of the rapidly-receding launch pad. Was somebody taking a felt-tip marker to the map?

Then it hit me, and by seeing what I’d originally overlooked, the entire scene morphed from a flat map to a deep three-dimensional real-world vision. The camera’s point of view was very, very high and still climbing. The black line — already many miles long and growing visibly — was the shadow of the shuttle’s smoke trail on the ground opposite the midday sun. Only then was I able to see what had not been there on the screen — the immense depth of space between the camera and the ground so far, far below. The sudden recognition brought a thrill — and a brief bout of vertigo.

Insights from the imagery
The images from the exterior camera showed lots of other phenomena that need interpretation and perspective.

Sure, at least two pieces came off during powered flight, but neither from that camera nor from dozens of other ground-based observation points did I ever see anything remotely similar to the jaw-dropping apparition I’ll never forget seeing on that video of Columbia's Jan. 16, 2003 launch: Something bright and big flew off the upper tank, vanished behind the spaceship’s left wing, and emerged as a spray of fragments.

It was scary then, and it’s still scary to think about. And the absence of anything like it on the Discovery ascent scenes is my protection over getting too worried now. So, the flapping sheet of something coming off the tank soon after solid rocket booster separation may have been startling, but it clearly passed below Discovery’s belly with no contact. The classic hockey rule applies: "No blood, no foul."

The smaller chip off one tile on the nose gear wheel well was impressive, too — but only because, small as it was, it was still apparently registered on radar. Pending closeup views that might show a steep gouge, it looks like any of the thousand-plus other tile dings that flight experience shows are tolerable.

MORE FROM HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

Human Spaceflight Section Front

Space station trio lands safely in Kazakhstan Crew shrinks to two on space station Shuttle fliers land with families on their minds Astronauts surprised by holiday turkey dinners New dad-in-space: Focusing on shuttle job easy Plan for human mission to asteroid gains speed Space shuttle lifts off amid tons of tweets Countdown begins for NASA's uncertain future Space hotel says it's on schedule to open in 2012 Space clown comes back down to Earth Human Spaceflight Section Front   Add Human Spaceflight headlines to your news reader: