NASA: Probably not the Insulation
NASA now thinks that something other than insulation from the booster hitting the left wing of the space shuttle Columbia during liftoff caused the shuttle to disintegrate on re-entry.
A photograph taken by an amateur astronomer in San Francisco showing a bolt of energy striking the shuttle just as the re-entry maneuver began has been sent to NASA for analysis.
There was a coronal mass ejection from the sun reaching the earth during the period that the shuttle was re-entering the atmosphere. This CME was not in itself unusual, but it could have charged the shuttle’s tiles with an electrical charge. If sufficiently high, this charge would have caused a potentially damaging discharged as the shuttle touched the upper atmosphere.
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