[meteorite-list] Caltech Astronomer Saw Shuttle Apparently in Trouble Over California

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:24 2004
Message-ID: <200302020129.RAA29987_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/shuttle_astronomer030201.html

Astronomer Spots Trouble
Astronomer Saw Shuttle Apparently in Trouble Over California

By John Antczak
The Associated Press
February 1, 2003

Los Angeles - Space shuttle Columbia appeared to begin trailing fiery
debris as it passed over Eastern California early today, well before its
destruction over Texas, according to a California Institute of Technology
astronomer who witnessed its fiery transit.

Anthony Beasley observed the shuttle's re-entry from outside his home in
Bishop, Calif., near Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory, where he is
project manager of the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave
Astronomy.

"As it tracked from west to east over the Owens Valley it was leaving a
bright trail. As it actually moved over the valley there were a couple of
flashes ... Then we could see there were things clearly trailing the
orbiter subsequent to that," Beasley said.

Shuttle Was Clearly Visible

Beasley said he, his wife, Anne, and mother-in-law, Anne Finley, had gone
outside in the early morning darkness to watch the re-entry from the small
town 225 miles north of Los Angeles. He said the sky was clear and dark, and
the shuttle was immediately visible when it cleared the Sierra Nevada peaks to
the west of Bishop.

He said he had never witnessed a shuttle re-entry before and is not an
authority on shuttles, but he immediately thought Columbia was having problems.

"In particular, there was one very clear event where there was a piece that
backed off the orbiter ... It was giving off its own light, then it slowly
fell from visibility," he said.

Loss of Tiles?

Beasley said he thought the shuttle might be losing some of the heat-resistant
tiles that protect it during the fiery re-entry. He said he did not
learn of the shuttle's destruction until he went to the observatory and
compared notes with two news photographers who had arranged to photograph
the re-entry through a telescope.

Beasley said they compared notes and all agreed they had seen what he termed
"the bright event, the third event."

"The analogy, I think, is it looked like the shuttle dropped a flare," he said.

He described the scene again: "Pretty soon after we started to see it track
there were brief flashes of light. It would sort of flash a little bit and
there was an indication of material trailing the orbiter. They would sort of
disappear from view. ...That happened two or three times. One of these was
very bright. It was a very clear thing. It separated itself from where the
orbiter is. It sort of fell behind in the trail and it was burning itself. It
was hot itself ... and then the orbiter continued heading toward Texas.
Received on Sat 01 Feb 2003 08:29:55 PM PST