IT鈥橲 back-to-school time for NASA. The agency is sending debris from the February 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Students there will become the first people outside NASA to analyse the wreckage.
The shuttle broke up during re-entry after hot gases flowed into a hole in the wing. The hole was caused by a chunk of foam falling onto it during lift-off. The debris most relevant to that analysis was studied in detail by NASA, but most of the remaining thousands of fragments of the shuttle have been examined only cursorily.
Now Lehigh students have been sent 50 pieces of glass, ceramic, polymers, composites and various metals, which they will examine with an array of microscopes. 鈥淲e are looking for telltale signs of brittle failure, ductile failure and so on,鈥� says Arnold Marder, professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh. NASA hopes the findings, which will be delivered next month, will help in the choice of materials for future shuttle missions.
Advertisement
