[meteorite-list] NASA Sends Columbia Wreckage for External Study

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Mar 21 13:24:55 2005
Message-ID: <200503101727.j2AHRGh16132_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524904.100

NASA sends Columbia wreckage for external study
New Scientist
March 12, 2005

IT'S back-to-school time for NASA. The agency is sending debris from the
February 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster to Lehigh University in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Students there will become the first people
outside NASA to analyse the wreckage.

The shuttle broke up during re-entry after hot gases flowed into a hole
in the wing. The hole was caused by a chunk of foam falling onto it
during lift-off. The debris most relevant to that analysis was studied
in detail by NASA, but most of the remaining thousands of fragments of
the shuttle have been examined only cursorily.

Now Lehigh students have been sent 50 pieces of glass, ceramic,
polymers, composites and various metals, which they will examine with an
array of microscopes. "We are looking for telltale signs of brittle
failure, ductile failure and so on," says Arnold Marder, professor of
materials science and engineering at Lehigh. NASA hopes the findings,
which will be delivered next month, will help in the choice of materials
for future shuttle missions.

>From issue 2490 of New Scientist magazine, 12 March 2005, page 5
Received on Thu 10 Mar 2005 12:27:15 PM PST