INTERNAL emails released by NASA this week suggest that the mystery object that struck the space shuttle Columbia’s wing on lift-off may have been a heavy chunk of ice, rather than a much lighter piece of foam insulation.
The NASA engineers who wrote the emails say an ice impact could have had a far greater effect on the craft’s ability to safely re-enter the atmosphere than was thought likely in the space agency’s post-launch damage analysis.
Daniel Mazenek of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia wrote that if the object caught on high-speed film was made of foam, it would have weighed about 1.2 kilograms, but…
