Recovered Tile Could Be Key Shuttle Clue

Yahoo! News ^ | 2/25/03 | Broward Liston

[coloradan]

Orangish residue? It must be glue from the seat-backs!

[NormsRevenge]

Tue Feb 25, 8:09 PM ET

This NASA handout photo, presented during a news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston February 25, 2003, shows a single thermal protection system tile from the Space Shuttle Columbia. A piece of tile, thrown off from the doomed shuttle Columbia as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere and recovered in Texas, bears deformations consistent with the kind of hot plasma flow that entered the shuttle through a breach, investigators said. Photo by Nasa/Reuters

[Keith]

Nice TWA 800 reference...Guess Sanders will go to jail on this one as well.

[Nick Danger]

Another one from the same news conference:

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks , I was just gonna post it.

[jlogajan]

Foam residue would not stand the 3000 degree heat. The orange on the tiles is either from mud or it is from a relatively non-volatile source, such as melted metal.

[jlogajan]

[Arkinsaw]

Foam residue would not stand the 3000 degree heat. The orange on the tiles is either from mud or it is from a relatively non-volatile source, such as melted metal.

Doesn't look like mud, some of it looks like its beaded up.

[TheBattman]

I figured you would be interested....

[Thud]

ping

[NormsRevenge]

I'd lean toward the orangeish color being caused by a metallic reaction, but Im no metallurgist. It has a rust-like color caused by being exposed to a wet environment, or oxidation.

It was out there for how long before being found?

What kind of soil was it found in?

LOts of questions here. Also, the piece from the glove was found farther west of this tile I believe, per the article.

[leadpenny]

Another one from the same news conference:

Are the photos at #5 and #8 opposite sides of the same tile?

[jlogajan]

It has a rust-like color caused by being exposed to a wet environment, or oxidation.

The re-entry plasma is a highly oxidizing environment.

[jlogajan]

Are the photos at #5 and #8 opposite sides of the same tile?

Yes.

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks for pinging this out.

This latest info got tacked on the end of BonesMcCoy's running Observation on TPS damage on Orbiter also.

I pinged some folks there earlier, but missed you and a few others.

[NormsRevenge]

I believe they are one and the same.

[NormsRevenge]

The front side and exposed silica is lily white for the most part in comparison to the bottom side where all the color appears.

[jlogajan]

Also, the piece from the glove was found farther west of this tile I believe, per the article.

Yes, the farthest west so far known. That piece may have come off over New Mexico as it was only 30-40 miles inside Texas. That means it came off before loss of communication, and therefore before the breakup. Either damage was proceeding backward from the leading edge, or something had punched through the bottom of the wing and was by then starting to punch through the top as well.

[leadpenny]

Thank you. FYI, C-SPAN2 is replaying the CAIB News Conference from 25 Feb at 5:10 AM Eastern.

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/fullschedule.csp