On 21 July 2011, NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely, in Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the end of the final shuttle mission, concluding the American space shuttle program, an eventful magnificent era in space exploration. NASA recently published an intriguing image, showing Atlantis, while leaving orbit, and diving into Earth’s atmosphere. The image was taken by an astronaut, aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Earth’s largest artificial satellite, orbiting at an altitude of about 350 km.
The image shows that Atlantis, during its ultimate descent, was blazing like a bright meteor, leaving a trail of hot glowing gases, due to its rapid motion. The image also records another intriguing atmospheric phenomenon, known as airglow. Airglow is visible as a halo of light, around Earth. It occurs as atoms and molecules, in the upper atmosphere, emit light, after being excited by ultraviolet radiation, coming from the Sun.
At the time of taking the image, Atlantis was flying near Mexico, while the ISS was orbiting near the Galapagos Islands, over 2,000 km to the southwest. Parts of the ISS are visible in the upper right corner of the image.
References
NASA’s Earth Observatory
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=51486
Wikipedia