{"id":368,"date":"2007-02-26T23:58:58","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T23:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/2007\/02\/26\/hail-damage-to-space-shuttle-external-fuel-tanks\/"},"modified":"2008-03-08T14:33:07","modified_gmt":"2008-03-08T14:33:07","slug":"hail-damage-to-space-shuttle-external-fuel-tanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/368","title":{"rendered":"Hail damage to Space Shuttle external fuel tanks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2007\/02\/070226_G12_IR4_7.GIF\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"GOES-12 10.7\u00c2\u00b5m IR image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2007\/02\/070226_G12_IR4_7.GIF\" alt=\"GOES-12 10.7\u00c2\u00b5m IR image\" title=\"GOES-12 10.7\u00c2\u00b5m IR image\" style=\"width: 480px; height: 362px\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An isolated thunderstorm developed over east-central Florida and moved over the Kennedy Space Center during the late afternoon on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov\/dailywxmap\/index_20070226.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"26 February 2007 daily weather map\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">26 February 2007<\/span><\/a>, producing golf ball size hail (<span style=\"font-weight: bold\">2.0 inches in diameter<\/span>) and wind gusts as high as <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">72 mph<\/span> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spc.noaa.gov\/climo\/reports\/070226_rpts.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"SPC storm reports\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">SPC storm reports<\/span><\/a>). This hail produced damage to the external fuel tanks of the Space Shuttle <span style=\"font-style: italic\">Atlantis<\/span>, which was on the launch pad undergoing preparations for a 15 March 2007 launch. This particular convective cell was relatively compact and formed rather quickly, and exhibited  cloud top temperatures between  -50 to -60\u00c2\u00ba C <em>(orange to red enhancement)<\/em> on GOES-12 10.7\u00c2\u00b5m InfraRed (IR) imagery <span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic\">(above; <a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2007\/02\/070226_g12_ir4.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"GOES-12 10.7\u00c2\u00b5m IR images (Java animation)\">Java animation<\/a>)<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>A comparison of  <strong>4-km<\/strong> resolution GOES-12 IR imagery with the  corresponding <strong>1-km<\/strong> resolution NOAA-15 AVHRR IR image <span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic\">(below)<\/span> shows that more accurate <span style=\"font-style: italic\">(and significantly colder)<\/span> cloud top temperatures can be detected using satellite instruments with better spatial resolution. Note the distinct &#8220;overshooting top&#8221; region with a minimum brightness temperature of <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">-65\u00c2\u00ba C<\/span> <span style=\"font-style: italic\">(dark red enhancement)<\/span> on the 21:50 UTC NOAA-15 image, versus cloud top temperature values that were only as cold as <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">-54\u00c2\u00ba C<\/span> <span style=\"font-style: italic\">(orange enhancement)<\/span> on the 21:45 UTC GOES-12 image (these two IR images were about 20-25 minutes prior to the time of the reported hail damage). The <a href=\"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/goes\/abi\/\" title=\"Advanced Baseline Imager\"><strong>Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI)<\/strong><\/a> instrument on <strong>GOES-R<\/strong> (scheduled for launch in 2014) will have IR channels with a spatial resolution of <strong>2 km<\/strong>, which should improve cloud top temperature detection capabilities over the current GOES imager IR channels.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2007\/02\/070226_G12_N15_IR_1.GIF\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"NOAA-15 \/ GOES-12 IR image comparison\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2007\/02\/070226_G12_N15_IR_1.GIF\" alt=\"NOAA-15 \/ GOES-12 IR image comparison\" title=\"NOAA-15 \/ GOES-12 IR image comparison\" style=\"width: 480px; height: 362px\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An isolated thunderstorm developed over east-central Florida and moved over the Kennedy Space Center during the late afternoon on 26 February 2007, producing golf ball size hail (2.0 inches in diameter) and wind gusts as high as 72 mph (SPC storm reports). This hail produced damage to the external fuel tanks of the Space Shuttle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,19,34,26,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avhrr","category-goes-12","category-goes-r","category-poes","category-severe-convection"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}