Last year, high school science teacher Ron Dantowitz of Brookline, Mass., played a clever trick on three of his best students. He asked them to plan a hypothetical mission to fly onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft and observe a spacecraft disintegrate as it came screaming into Earth's atmosphere. How would they record the event? What could they learn?

For 6 months, they worked hard on their assignment, never suspecting the surprise Dantowitz had in store.


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On March 12th, he stunned them with the news: "The mission is real, and you're going along for the ride." In early June, Dantowitz and the teenagers traveled halfway around the world to help NASA track Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft as it plunged into Earth's atmosphere at 27,000 mph and shattered over the Australian outback. After boarding the DC-8 and flying to 41,000 feet, their hard work finally paid off when they successfully recorded the fiery re-entry: "As it came into our camera's field of view, Hayabusa looked like a little white dot at first, and we all followed it for a few seconds without uttering a sound," says young James Breitmeyer. "Then it exploded into a big orange fireworks display, with pieces flying off. Everyone crooned 'Ooooo' at the same time!" The recording was made as part of the Hayabusa Re-entry Airborne Observing Campaign. Dantowitz and his students Breitmeyer, Brigitte Berman, and Yiannis Karavas were invited to join the effort because of Dantowitz's expertise in optical observations, tracking, and spectroscopy.

Source: Students Record Spellbinding Video of Disintegrating Spacecraft

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