From: ikluft [at] thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft)
To: sat-l [at] wvara.org (WVARA Satellite SIG)
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 07:46:42 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [SAT-L] shuttle disaster

I was hoping to come back from the mountain with a happy story of having seen
a normal space shuttle re-entry.  We did see the shuttle come over the Bay
Area.  But everyone whom I watched with noticed that the ion trail was much
more obvious than on previous viewings, looking more like a smoke trail.
Unfortunately, anyone who has seen the news knows that Columbia did not make
it to Florida.  It broke up at 200,000' over Texas south of Dallas, and
there was no chance for the crew to get out at that altitude.

So unfortunately, I should encourage anyone who saw the re-entry to write
down what you saw.  If you got pictures (and some of the astronomers whom
I met there from the Peninsula Astronomical Society got video), please save
the information in case it can be of any use for the crash investigation.

In memory of the crew of STS-107 Columbia...