Word: columbia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Columbia, Houston," Hobaugh repeated several more times, but still there was nothing. Mission controllers--at least the veterans--did not expect there would...
...Columbia, Houston," Hobaugh said. "Com check...
Static crackled back. "Columbia, Houston. UHF com check," Hobaugh said, as Mission Control switched channels...
Outside Mission Control, in the hot path the flaming Columbia cut through the sky, no one needed to see computer data to know the day had taken a bad turn. In Nacogdoches, Texas, 17-year-old Heath Drewery was in bed when he was jolted by what sounded like an explosion outside his house. "I heard this big rumble and thought a train had derailed," he says. He and his brother piled into their truck and drove into town, where the street was littered with debris. "There were pieces all over the place. It looked like it was charcoal...
...falling foam did damage the ship, the most disturbing possibility is that it chipped or broke one or more of Columbia's heat-absorbing tiles. The spacecraft is protected from the hellish heat of re-entry by thermal blankets and about 24,000 black and white ceramic tiles. The jigsaw-puzzle pieces have given the space agency fits since the very first flight of the very first shuttle--Columbia in April 1981. Handfuls of them often flaked away during lift-off, leaving NASA with nothing to do but wait out the flight and hope that the skin had not been...