Ascent of the X-37B

The Atlas 5 momentarily disappears behind its own billowing exhaust.

The Atlas 5 ascends out of the evening twilight into bright sunshine.

Already winds are distorting the exhaust trail.

If you look closely at these and the following images you can see the shadow of the exhaust plume on the aerosols suspended in the Floridian evening sky.

Although this plume looks vertical in these images because of the changing orientation of my camera, the rocket was arcing eastwards out over the Atlantic ocean. The rocket has now entered that layer of the atmosphere where the exhaust does not condense into visible droplets.

The Atlas 5 is still thrusting up through the condensate free zone.

Now into the stratosphere, the Atlas 5 is again leaving a visible trail as it heads off downrange.

The Atlas 5's plume visibly widened as the rocket ascended into the less dense layers of the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the winds of the troposphere continued to tear the early exhaust plume apart.

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Text, images and audio Copyright to Andrew Rennnie, 2010