NASA has given the heave-ho to some of the foam insulation surrounding the space shuttle’s external fuel tank and has cleared the shuttle Discovery’s tank for a launch in July.
During Discovery’s last launch in July 2005, a 450-gram chunk of foam fell off the external tank’s “protuberance air load” (PAL) ramp, which is a manually applied foam structure. It did not hit the orbiter, but it concerned NASA engineers enough to remove the two PAL ramps for the next flight. It was a chunk of falling foam that was responsible for the Columbia disaster in 2003.
Some concerns remained,…
