Space Shuttle's ET138 Video downlink

STS-135: Space shuttle Atlantis completes External Tank death camera.

A subject i follow closely is NASA's space shuttle programme and ham radio on the international space station ARISS.and a story i felt would be of some interest to radio hams in Australia and NZ or those of you in the flight path during ascent.
July 8th is the scheduled final space shuttle launch and NASA engineers have installed a camera on the external fuel tank (ET) which will transmit live pictures of its destructive burn up on re-entry.
The live FM transmitted signal will be on the 13cms band 2272.5mhz at 10 watts.
The camera captures images at (NTSC) frame rate of 30 frames per second and will burn up over the pacifc ocean over the east coast of new zealand,Entry interface (EI) will begin at 400.000ft over southern australia and can be seen with the naked eye.
So those in amateur television in the south pacific area may see some great video come July 8.

More on this story at nasaspaceflight.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/06/sts-135-atlantis-tcdt-external-tank-death-camera-ready/
73

 

This looks very exciting, I dream of putting amateur TV on the external tank so hams below on the ground track can view as it passes over them. But why oh why is it done on the last flight, there are so many things that can go wrong when trying something for the first time (it is like trying ATV from the field for the first time, lots of unexpected problems arise).

I wish the best for this effort! Consider antenna not facing away from earth, will a phasma envelope the ET and block transmissions? Will we see pieces break away? Will we see "flames" starting to form? Or will it simply explode when hitting EI?

You all watching it, record it with a VCR!

 

Im still having a look around for the video of the external fuel tank ET138 re-entry and burn up.
Waiting for NASA to post it on youtube i found this posted by NILSATCOM on youtube.
Nice work nilsatcom!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WrhHRchjAc