NASA: Thermal Images of Shuttle Discovery

These newly-released thermal images capture the play of heat across the surface of the space shuttle Discovery as it returned to Earth on 11 September 2009.

They were taken from a Navy patrol aircraft, which tracked the space vehicle as it streaked past en route to Edwards Air Force base.

A total of 8 minutes of uninterrupted thermal footage was captured, recording the surface heat on the shuttle as it decelerated from Mach 19, or 6.5 kilometres per second, to just below Mach 9.

The observations will be combined with data from sensors on board the shuttle, as well as computer models.

This is the third time the HYTHIRM team has successfully captured thermal images of the space shuttle. The other two were STS-119 on 28 March (bottom left) and STS-125 on 24 May, which serviced the Hubble Space Telescope. Getting detailed information about the shuttle's heat distribution is important for evaluating the craft's safety, an issue that was highlighted by the space shuttle Columbia's destruction by heat when it re-entered the atmosphere in 2003.

(Image: NASA Langley)