Orbital Blue

External tank, ET-138, in an image captured with a hand-held camera July 8 by astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis after their launch from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The external tank, “gas tank” for the orbiter, contains the propellants used by the space shuttle main engines. Approximately 8.5 minutes into shuttle Atlantis’ flight, with its propellant used, ET-138 was jettisoned. When it encountered the upper atmosphere, the tank heats up and disintegrates. As it enters the lower atmosphere it plunges before breaking apart. After a fiery descent through the atmosphere, ET-138 will break up into hundreds of small pieces of metal and plunge toward the 11,000 foot depths of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, east of Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania.