Shuttle Endeavour damaged by falling ice

This doesn’t sound good..

An analysis of images taken during Wednesday’s lift-off in Cape Canaveral, Florida, shows that the shuttle’s underbelly was hit by a piece of ice – rather than foam from its external fuel tank as previously believed, he said. The impact left what appeared to be a 19 square centimetre gouge near the hatch of one of the shuttle’s landing gears.

Thermal tile damage on shuttle Endeavour, BBC.

Hopefully carrying teachers on the shuttle isn’t bad luck..

Bear
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia.