Gnodal Journal

www.nasa.gov/columbia/ – Space Shuttle Columbia and Her Crew – “this page will collect and distribute information about the crew, the flight, and the ongoing investigation.”

As you can imagine, NASA servers are getting pounded. A very intelligent set of resources is published on NASA Television and on NASA TV on the Web. (One feeds that’s holding up very well is that from JPL … perhaps they’re used to getting pounded? This one and the other traditional feeds are consistenly better than those posted more recently.)
NB: Since 99.5% of coverage is talking head stuff, I’ve set RealAudio connection to 14.4 … not only is my feed uninterrupted, but my load is roughly 1/6th that of those sucking down 80KB or whatever. When I’m not viewing RA, I feed from KSC’s nasatv.ra audio feed at 8.5KB … again, without interruption, but this time at nearly 1/10th the pull. (Look to see who’s maximizing their own share … /that’s/ someone you don’t want on your team.)

Data harvesting for Columbia investigation: NASA has arranged for anonymous FTP upload – Instructions for Uploading Images and Video Related to the Columbia Accident

From today’s NASA JSC daily briefing – first thermal spike was in the wheel well: 20-30 degrees rise in five minutes;
8:54 left mid-fuselage 60 degree increase over five minutes (right side increased 15); 8:58 roll trim increase in left elevon, indicating an increase in drag; measurements fail for wheel well area and back; 8:59 roll trim increase, indicating counter to increased drag on the left; loss of signal.
Data recovery may yield as much as 32secs of additional information. (Records are validated real-time; those that fail are not displayed. Data that failed strict real-time criteria is on hand.)

NB: Updated contact data for transmittal of digital images: columbiaimages@nasa.gov

Real feeds: nasa_tv;
nasatv;
nasatv2;
nasatv ames,
kscnasa, jpl live, and *!use this!*
nasatv audio. (JPL has a 512K feed … I cannot receive it [Hey! 28.8 SLIrP!!] so do not know its contents.)

[I have left www.unitedspacealliance.com/ off the list; at 6dB in the red for the duration, audio is inexcusably poor.]

I don’t know that this quote from evan’s LiveJournal (“Link Pool“) formulates the matter real well, but I think he’s approaching that and a subset of solutions as well:

“So the growing problem with personal news sites (aka “weblogs”, but also including sites like slashdot or metafilter) is that there are so many of them you can’t read them all. In fact, the growing phenomenon is that many people don’t report the news at all, and instead select a subset of the news found elsewhere and link to it.”

Very sad … very, very sad. Once upon a time, long ago, I had a comm link stop. Sometimes silence is a terrible thing.

“Columbia, Houston … UHF comm check.” [no reply]

NASA Mission Events Summary: “De-orbit and Entry“
Weather radar image of debris path – “Anyone who believes they have found debris related to Columbia should call the Johnson Space Center Emergency Operations Center, (281)-483-3388. Be aware that hazardous chemicals may be present; do not disturb or move any debris.”

STS-107 Flight: January 16-February 1, 2003
Crew:
* Commander Rick D. Husband (2nd flight),
* Pilot William C. McCool (1st flight),
* Payload Specialist Michael P. Anderson (2nd flight),
* Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla (2nd flight),
* Mission Specialist David M. Brown (1st flight),
* Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark (1st flight),
* Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel (1st flight)

Sincerest regret and sympathy to crew’s family.

Ground control flies flag half-mast
Excerpted from NASA Statement on Loss of Columbia: “Entry Flight Director Leroy Cain declared a contingency for the shuttle Columbia at around 9:14 EST … Communication and tracking of the shuttle was lost at 9 a.m. EST at an altitude of about 203,000 feet in the area above north central Texas. At the time communications were lost. The shuttle was traveling approximately 12,500 miles per hour (Mach 18). No communication and tracking information were received in Mission Control after that time. “

NASA TV – Live 24/7 broadcast
http://vstream1.ksc.nasa.gov/ramgen/ha/nasa_tv.rm
http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/video/live.rpm
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/rrg2.pl?encoder/nasatv.rm
NASA TV is on AMC-2, Transponder 9C, vertical polarization at 85 degrees West longitude, 3880 MHz, with audio at 6.8 MHz.