A bit of as yet unidentified debris was seen floating away from the Shuttle Atlantis after some RCS engine firing tests. The landing will be delayed while they try to figure out what it was.
My take on the enhanced image is a tile with some of the gap fillers and thermal blanket from the backside of it. In most cases a single tile loss is not a huge deal unless it is in a critical location or likely to cause an unzippering of other tiles.
This is all pure conjecture, probably wrong, on my part. But hey, what is a blog for if one can not make wild guesses on insufficient data?
Dale, excuse my unscientificness
But we appear to be sending men and women into space, protected only by used BBQ bricks stuck on the hull of these spacecraft by Evostick.
Why!!?
Where are the flying saucers?
Exactly RAB,
Or perhaps more technically, where are the variable cycle SSTO spaceplanes? Dale, do you know if Alan Bond is making any real progress with Skylon?
The shuttle increasingly resembles a 20 year old Ford Escort that has started costing more to run than replace. And I’ve seen NASA’s replacement ideas and it depressed me utterly.
So much lost opportunity. I should sending this from a .co.mars account by now.
Nothing to worry about, just a common space jellyfish. In fact, NASA is not entirely unfamiliar with such encounters. You would think with all the photographic evidence that NASA would have no problem in identifying them…
UPDATE: This just in!
It does surprise me that the shuttle’s tiles haven’t been carefully laid out not to “unzipper” if one pops off.