tether still weird

[boomerang]

NASA's infamous tether in orbit experiment in 1996 still seems a bit mysterious after all these years. I recall staying up one night to watch the detached satellite and tether pass over. It was one of the strangest looking things I've ever seen in the sky. The 12 mile long tether line glowed brightly, looking like an electric fluorescent light tube in the dark sky. The line itself was supposedly no thicker than a match stick.

http://youtu.be/JuFBUS0kiSA

 

[Snidely Whiplash]

I was still pretty young when this went down. Can you give a thumbnail of what this is all about, cheers!

 

[trainedobserver]

That has been explained and reproduced a couple of times.

 

[boomerang]

I'm less intrigued by the floating discs than by the question of how something as thin as the tether line could glow so brightly, and for days. Check starting at about 2:50 on the video. Houston makes mention of "the strand" being much wider (brighter?) than anticipated and asks the shuttle something about the satellite's orientation. This is followed by a long period of silence.

 

[Snidely Whiplash]

thanks trainedobserver for this links, keep up the good work!

 

[Xylo]

I used to think the tether incident was a pretty good case for UFOlogy. But with all the explanations of lens artifacts, it seems fairly well debunked. I still think that STS48 is worthy of more investigation, at least something more than the "urine dump" we heard.