NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Chris Kitting of California State University, East Bay in Hayward, Calif., peers through his telescope-imaging camera during the transit flight from Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., to Tahiti in French Polynesia. This camera was used study the small trailing fragments during the later stages of fragmentation during the re-entry of the European Space Agency’s “Jules Verne” spacecraft.
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Eric James

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From foreground to background: Team members of the airborne observation campaign of the European Space Agency’s “Jules Verne” spacecraft re-entry, Ron Dantowitz and Marek Kozubal of the Clay Center Observatory and the Dexter and Southfield Schools in Boston, Mass., set up a battery of spectrographs on a Gulfstream V aircraft. These cameras were used to measure the nature of the different fragments of the “Jules Verne” spacecraft as it broke up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Eric James

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The team of more than 30 international scientists and researchers from across NASA, ESA and astronomical institutes who participated in the airborne observation campaign of the European Space Agency’s “Jules Verne” spacecraft stand beside NASA’s Douglas DC-8 aircraft in Papeete, Tahiti in the French Polynesia just after the team returned from the re-entry observation flight.
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Eric James

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NASA Ames videographer, Jesse Carpenter, steadies the custom-designed camera rig on a off-set plate, featuring a pivot point near the front of the camera’s long zoom, image-stabilized lens. Bill Moede, also a NASA Ames videographer, assists by checking the aperture and focus settings of the camera during the final rehearsal 24 hours before mission night.
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Eric James

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Claire Webb, a SETI Institute Research Experience for Undergraduates student and undergraduate at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., along with Michael Borden, a NASA Ames Exploration Academy student, practice tracking the European Space Agency’s “Jules Verne” aircraft as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere with a cooled Charge-Coupled Device camera mounted in a high port onboard NASA’s Douglas DC-8 aircraft. A transmission grating was placed in front of the camera lens to create high-resolution spectra the science team members used to measure the physical conditions of the “Jules Verne” spacecraft as it re-entered.
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Eric James

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What weighed 13 tons, took four minutes to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at more than 170 miles an hour and could be seen almost 250 miles away? Was it a bird? A plane? It was the European Space Agency (ESA)’s “Jules Verne” spacecraft!

During the week before “Jules Verne” was scheduled to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, NASA Ames’ Peter Jenniskens, who also works for the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and a team of more than 30 international scientists from across NASA, ESA and astronomical institutes began to prepare for their mission: to capture four minutes of flame and fragmentation as “Jules Verne” descended over the South Pacific Ocean.

This was no small feat – pulling together a mission like this requires immense amounts of coordination. Ames’ Dave Jordan, the observation campaign manager, along with NASA’s Headquarters, Washington; Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.; and ESA’s automated transfer vehicle (ATV) spacecraft control center in Toulouse, France; worked to ensure everything went smoothly and according to plan – from fueling the planes to feeding the crewmembers.

“The spectacular success of the mission validates the time we devoted to preparation,” Jordan said.

Preparation included hanging up black curtains to block out in-cabin lights inside NASA’s Douglas DC-8 airborne laboratory and a Gulfstream V jet; checking camera stands; plugging in laptops and camera controllers; addressing the global positioning satellite and timing signals; testing communications with ESA’s ATV control center and between the two observation airplanes. It also meant installing time inserters for the video cameras; using bright calibration lamps to measure the cameras’ sensitivity and wavelength response; completing instrument check-outs; and adjusting the team members’ biological clocks to a “graveyard shift” since “Jules Verne” was scheduled to make its grand entrance at 3 a.m. (6 a.m. PDT), and everyone needed to be alert.

On Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008, with a little less than a week before re-entry, Jenniskens, the “Jules Verne” airborne campaign principal investigator and science team lead, and the team boarded the DC-8 for a two-hour evening test flight. The science team flew two hours to verify all the spectroscopes, high-frame-rate and infrared cameras were working properly onboard the aircraft, and to be sure the windows did not ice over when flying at high altitudes – a simple but serious show-stopper.

By Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, both the DC-8 and Gulfstream V aircraft were fully outfitted and on Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, instruments, researchers and scientists were ready to begin the mission. Later that evening, a crew of photographers from NASA’s Ames Research Center arrived at NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility at Palmdale, Calif., and loaded their HD video, still cameras and gear onto the two airplanes for their “red-eye” flight to Papeete, Tahiti in French Polynesia.

“We loaded up, strapped in and went,” said Jesse Carpenter, a videographer at NASA Ames who helped document the re-entry. “The attitude was like, OK let’s do it!”

In his mission blog, Jenniskens said, “A sense of anticipation is rising…We all very much want to make this mission a success. This morning's moon was just a sliver, reminding us that the entry is just days away.” The re-entry was scheduled to happen at 3:34 a.m. (6:34 a.m. PDT) over a new moon night sky, free of anything but starlight. The observers would be free to witness the spectacle in ideal and virtually unchanging conditions far above the clouds.

On the way to Papeete, the scientists took spectra of stars through the planes’ windows and practiced aircraft positioning maneuvers before landing in Tahiti the following morning. To adjust their internal clocks, team members slept during the day and started their final preparations by holding crew briefings for that night’s flight at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. PDT). At 11 p.m. (2 a.m. PDT) on Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008, the two aircraft took off and headed southwest to rendezvous with the “Jules Verne” spacecraft during its fiery descent.

“Since it was so humid and hot on the ground, we super-refrigerated the cabin after buttoning up the plane to try to prevent the windows from fogging up with ice,” said Carpenter. “It was a bizarre temperature shift.”

“Even though it was cold in the airplane, that didn’t stop the sweat from flowing,” said Bill Moede, an Ames videographer on the documentation team. During the four-hour flight to the target safe zone, the NASA Ames video team set-up a custom-designed camera rig on an off-set plate, similar to the rig they used during the Stardust observation campaign, featuring a pivot point near the front of the camera’s long zoom, image-stabilized lens.

“Operating the camera was like holding a wheel barrel with all the weight in the back,” Carpenter explained. “Or maybe more like painting fine brush stokes with a 50-pound paintbrush,” he joked.

Even though both aircraft were positioned to give everyone onboard a prime view of the event, many researchers and scientists weren’t able to see the 3:34 a.m. to 3:38 a.m. (6:34 a.m. to 6:38 a.m. PDT) re-entry with their naked eyes, because they were too busy capturing it with their cameras and equipment.

“I just can’t get my head around what we saw right in front of us,” said Ed Schilling, lead videographer for the mission. “A tiny glittering red star grew into this huge Roman candle, like at a fourth of July fireworks show – then vanished into the night.”

“The final minutes of ATV were more glorious than we had expected,” wrote Jenniskens in his mission blog. “It was just beautiful; very majestic. It looked like a bright green fireball with a veil of hundreds of vivid orange fragments.”

With the observation complete, the crew headed back to Dryden and Ames Research centers with a wealth of new spectrographic and re-entry data. During the flight, the video team played back their re-entry tape multiple times for entranced mission members.

“We had the pilots, the mission managers and almost every researcher on board watching our little monitor as we played back the re-entry,” said Moede. “‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ were very common during the playback!”

“Documenting in so much detail how ATV broke upon entry in such an exciting international mission was a fitting contribution to NASA’s 50th anniversary today,” Jenniskens reflected on his Oct. 1, 2008 return.

To view video of the ATV reentry, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/podcasting/2008/ATV_reentry_lo_res.html

To view the ATV image gallery visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/images/2008/JulesVerne.html

To view video of what went on behind the scenes during the ATV reentry, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/podcasting/2008/ATV_reentry_behind_scenes.html

To read the related press release, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08_84AR.html

To view SETI's ATV Web site, visit:

http://atv.seti.org/
Rachel Prucey
NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. 650-604-0643
rachel.l.prucey@nasa.gov