Traveling display moves NASA work force

It is flat-out the most moving flight safety display in the history of U.S. space exploration.

Encased in a glass triangle is one of the cockpit windows the lost crew of Columbia would have looked out as the ship's payload bay doors swung shut prior to an ill-fated atmospheric re-entry in February 2003.

There's a charred piece of the wing panel that was struck 82 seconds into flight by a wedge of external tank foam insulation, blasting open a six- to 10-inch hole that went undetected in flight.

There's a severely damaged thermal tile from the shuttle's left wing -- one that burned from the inside out as the orbiter encountered extreme reentry temperatures that topped 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

And there the commander's Translational Hand Controller -- the "stick" shuttle skipper Rick Husband fought mightily with in a hopeless bid to steer his crippled spaceship back to safety at its Kennedy Space Center homeport.

Read the rest of the story here: Moving Display.

Click to enlarge this photo of the Flight Deck Starboard Aft Bulkhead Window:















Here's a look at the moving message on the back side of the display. Click to enlarge it and save it:















You'll need to rotate this photo of the Left Orbital Maneuvering System Pod Fuel Drain & Purge Panel.















Click to enlarge and save this photo of the Orbiter Translational Hand Controller -- the mission commander's "stick":
















Here's the Left Hand Wing Tip With Reinforced Carbon Carbon (RCC) embedded:
















Click to enlarge and save this photo of one of Columbia's Forward Reaction Control System thrusters, which fired repeatedly in an attempt to right the ship's course:















Here's a look at the display from the front:















Click to enlarge and save this photo, which is a look at the front of the display fron a slightly different angle. Note that the names of the astronauts lost in the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire, the 1986 shuttle Challenger disaster and the Columbia accident all are inscribed on the curved side of the display:















You'll need to rotate this photo of the other curved edge of the display, which features just a few words, but a big message: "Everyone." "Remember." "Resolve." "Recover." Over photos of debris collected in a hangar near the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center"















And one last click-to-enlarge photo of a worker examining the display:















The display traveled last week to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's in Building 1 there, we're told, and it will be there for about three weeks before moving on to Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., NASA White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, N.M., Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The display will make three week stays at each location in the order listed above. It is expoected back here at Kennedy Space Center in November.