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Shuttle Columbia Flight Recorder Recovered In Texas

Posted by timothy on from the what-it-was-intended-for dept.

ctar writes "ABC News reports that the space shuttle Columbia's flight recorder has been found in Hemphill Texas. ABC says: "The finding today came after NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said investigators may never find a single definitive cause for the destruction of Columbia""

3 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Better article by Erect+Horsecock · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here More information than the press blurb in the article

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    I hope you die painfully and alone.
  2. Note to self by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Funny

    Note to self: Check out what data recovery firm is doing work for NASA on the flight recorder. Keep in mind for any future problems. Anyone that can resurrect a recording device that's been blasted from an exploding spacecraft into the top of the atmosphere, subjected to incredible, rock-melting heat, and then slammed into the ground at terminal velocity can probably handle anything.

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    May we never see th
  3. Re:Probably doesn't mean much by arb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The shuttle's recorder is pretty much redundant, since they send everything down in realtime anyway. It's unlikely that this will tell us anything new, IMHO.

    Except when the shuttle is tumbling all over the place and the antenna is not pointing anywhere near one of the receiving stations... The recorder could contain some information that it gathered while the shuttle was out of control. A large chunk of the "last 32 seconds" of data transmitted by the shuttle is missing and/or unusable. The recorder will hopefully be able to fill in the gaps there and maybe give some clues to what happened even later in the process.