[r9etb]

No way is this a close up of the space shuttle....wrong shape. 'Tail' is way to wide proportionally to the width of the main fuselage.

I disagree. The entire image is certainly distorted "wide," but this does indeed look like it's the body of the Shuttle, seen from behind.

The darker rectangle, right in the middle, looks to be the body flap. The rounded area at the bottom is the nose, and of course the grayish triangular shape below the white blob would be the wings-to-nose, as seen from below. The black spots on the white "side bulges" look to be the OMS nozzles.

It's worth noting that the "body flap" looks broken on the right hand side.

The vehicle does seem to be traveling sideways at this point, as the "smoke" is trailing off to the right. If this is truly the case, then it would not be at all surprising for the tail to have come off by this point.

The main engines are not visible here -- either they're white-hot, gone, or simply obscured by plasma. They my have been torn off at or about the same time as the tail.

At this point there doesn't seem to be any obvious damage to the left wing, but it does appear to be "shorter." This could be an optical trick.

I think this particular video is going to be enhanced to the hilt, and eventually they may be able to spot something with it.

Personally, though, I think they're going to get most of their answers from telemetry.

[finnman69]

Sorry, I am right

Even if the image was distorted wide why would the proportion of the width of the fuselage to the wingspan change? It would not. If this is in fact was a closeup view of the orbiter, the high magnification and narrow field of vision would render the image very flat and non-distorted(as opposed to a wide angle lens). In that case, the proportion of the fuselage to the wingspan would remain the same. In the supposed closeup the 'ears'of the engines containing the smaller engines appear at a point halfway between the wingtip and the centerline of the aircraft. In reality they are at the inner 1/3rd point from the centerline. . What you calling the body flap appears to be 1/2 the total length of the image. In reality the body flap is less than a third the width of the total wingspan. And if the tail had broken off, there is no way this thing would not be tumbling out of control at that speed. This image and footage appears to be stable

This is NOT a closeup clear image of the shuttle. It's an optical distortion that happens to be similiar to the shape of the shuttle.