tobedetermined!

War visible from Space

Posted on Wednesday, October 4, 2006

The 2-week visit of Anousheh Ansari to the ISS was definitely one of the more interesting events in space lately. Her Space blog gives a very open, personal and compassionate insight into the daily activities during her trip, from the very good (first view of Earth from space) to the rather bad (space sickness and nowhere to go...). In a related article on spacedaily, this quote caught my attention:

"According to one of her fellow space travellers, Israel's four-week bombardment of Lebanon was visible to "the naked eye" from space."

Mmm...makes you wonder what you'll think when you see these little light flashes down there on the ground...Which brings me to the intruiging photo depicted here above.

Working on a concept for new re-entry technology demonstration mission for ESA (which if launched will use a recoverted USSR nuclear missile SS-18-N (aka VOLNA), I get introduced to quite some spectacular military imagery. Like the one above, which is a timed exposure of a nuclear missile re-entry test firing (aka MIRV, or Multiple Independently targetable Return Vehicles - thank god for wikipedia ;). The streaks of light are individual warheads raining down on the Earth. And in case you always wondered what a nuclear warhead re-entry capsule actually looks like, here are a couple of them ( some more nice images):