alienation news

NASA explores whether space debris at fault as launch debris fades as culprit


The possibility That Columbia Was Fatally Wounded by space debris is growing.
"There have been many, many impacts," said Donald H. Emero, a former NASA shuttle manager who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that examined the danger of "orbital debris" for NASA in 1997.
Although the impacts force NASA to regularly replace pitted window panes and repair or replace damaged ceramic tiles that provide insulation from the heat of reentry, a shuttle had never suffered serious damage from debris.
The Pentagon's Space Control Center in Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado tracks more than 8,500 manmade objects and has warned NASA 12 times to move the shuttle out of the way of a potential collision. The space station has moved six times after a military warning.