..two thrusters fired briefly in a last-ditch effort to regain control. The yaw thrusters are nomally firing at this point in the re-entry, because there is not enough air, and the shuttle is in a too high a pitch attitude to make the rudder/speedbrake functional. The thrusters are the only means of yaw control at this point.
The extra data was retrieved from a little-known form of communication on space shuttles. In addition to having communication gear that sends its signals earthward, shuttles have an antenna that points up. These signals are received by Tracking Data and Relay System Satellites, which relay signals from lower orbiting satellites, and from space shuttles, back to the Earth. Little known only to NYT reporters. And there are four S-band PM Quad antennas, and two S-Band FM hemi antennas, as well as the UHF antennas. No matter what the orientiation of the shuttle, the GPCs select which antennae should be used.
The computers are not like the black box used in general aviation, and do not even have hard drives to store information...."investigators held out little hope of extracting additional information." Obviously, this so-called reporter has not been to space camp. The main memory in the GPC's is core memory, and the "hard drives" are the Mass Memory Units which store their data on magnetic tape. Both of these are non-volatile if they survived the re-entry and didn't suffer too much heat.
Each of the computers, which are made by IBM, is 7.62 inches high, 10.2 inches wide and 19.55 inches long. Each weighs 57 pounds. Now there's some really useful information. What a jerk.
Hey; if he can't baffle you with his brilliance, at least he'll try to baffle you with his bullsh_t! LOL