The View from a Suborbital Rocket Ride — Up and Down
If you’ve ever wondered what the view is like from a suborbital launch — and landing — this seven minute video from the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) shows the flight of Maven-11 in May 2008. It reached an altitude of 228 kilometers, providing a stunning view of Earth.
SSC has a sounding rocket center at Esrange, 45 kilometers from Kiruna, Sweden, north of the Arctic Circle. Maser-11 was launched for the European Space Agency and carried microgravity research experiments. Views from cameras on rockets on their way up are commonplace, but not so much from capsules on the way down. That view also is interesting, along with post-landing as the capsule lays askew on the ground waiting for the recovery team, probably not unlike a Soyuz capsule (or any crew spacecraft other than the space shuttle or other winged vehicles like SpaceShipTwo) returning from the International Space Station. That part doesn’t look like quite so much fun.
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