Sorry Snopercod, can't help with details. I wasn't working this flight (not to station), but Columbia was the orbiter that was planned for our use next November as the first Columbia to fly to ISS. What a way to wake up, with a phone call from a friend telling me to turn on the TV immediately.
From what I have heard so far, my guess is that a landing gear door opened long before it was supposed to (tire pressure gauge heating up being last data reported.) With all of the security on this flight hard to believe that a sabatuer could have gotten that close to do this, but given the World circumstances and an Israeli astronaut on board one has to assume that the Islamofascists would do something like this if they could.
It's going to be a bad Monday. :(
It's going to be a real bad monday in Baghdad (or Mecca), if they trace this to the Islamofascists.
The tire pressure data is not readily available to the crew, IIRC - only on...what was it...Spec 60 or something. Don't know if they would get an SM alert - probably would, but I think that Houston would monitor that stuff for them and advise.
It's hard to imagine how a MLG door could open without a mechanical failure of some kind. The overcenter lock is hydrauliclly operated, with pyro backup.
I just heard that this was Columbia's first flight after OMDP. I don't know if that's true, and if so, whether the OMDP was done at Palmdale or KSC.
All I know is that every time an orbiter came back from OMDP at Palmdale, it was totally trashed by those pot-smoking derelicts out there. There were always well over 1,000 IPR's taken on the damage when an orbiter arrived back home. (Yes KSC is their home, not Palmdale.)
It's going to be a real bad monday in Baghdad (or Mecca), if they trace this to the Islamofascists. It would be their last one,make no mistake about that. It's highly unlikely terrorism had anything to do with this,though.