Heading Alignment Cone

The Heading Alignment Cylinder (HAC) is actually a virtual truncated cone, used to guide NASA's Space Shuttle onto the centerline of a runway for landing. The radius of a HAC is about 18,000 feet, and will be entered at about 22 NM of altitude. It consists of one smooth turn along with a high rate of descent.

The HAC is followed until landing runway alignment, plus or minus 20 degrees, has been achieved.

Once, there was an add-on that visualized the flight path throughout the descent, however this add-on is not found in the Orbithangar.

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The HAC is cleary shown on the flight path of STS-117.