Grounding the Shuttle Fleet.

In the days after Discovery launched on July 26th, 2005, NASA ground crews began to examine photographs and telemetry obtained during the launch to check for anything suspicious. NASA was taking these precautions to prevent the type of disaster that destroyed Columbia on reentry.

Columbia’s leading edge of her wing was impacted by a piece of foam insulation on the big orange colored external fuel tank.

The foam damaged the heat-resistant carbon heat shield, and upon reentry that section failed, causing Columbia to break up upon reentry. In the wake of this event, NASA implemented a number of procedures to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Discovery’s return to flight was to see if the changes made to the orbiter paid off. Sadly, there were still issues with the foam insulation during this launch.

Pieces of foam fell off during the launch of Discovery on STS-114. Thankfully, they didn’t impact the Shuttle, but NASA still saw fit to ground the fleet in the wake of this development. What was troubling is that the agency had just spent the previous two years fixing the foam problems that had affected numerous missions to varying degrees. After Discovery…