[socal_parrot]

As I said earlier, NASA first noticed the problem at 8:53 Eastern. The shuttle was over California at that time.

[don-o]

You are correct.

They began to notice that sensors were giving unusual readings. Could a ground observer noted that?

[Joe Hadenuf]

As I said earlier, NASA first noticed the problem at 8:53 Eastern. The shuttle was over California at that time.

I would tend to agree with this. The will determine almost exactly where it was, and soon when the event first started.

[cgbg]

NASA first noticed the problem at 8:53 Eastern. The shuttle was over California at that time

Yup.

I think NASA was doing a little "shading" in their press conference when it probably was not necessary.

Questions that were not asked and that they didn't want asked were:

Have these sensors ever failed in re-entry before?

When the sensors started to fail did it occur to anyone there that they might have a thermal event on their hands?

It may be that NASA had gotten a little complacent about re-entry after so many (100+) successful reentrys and didn't understand the problem for quite a few minutes.

But all that really is academic, because if the shuttle is in atmosphere reentry it is little more than a runaway rock and there is not a whole lot anybody can do if there is a major problem. :-(