Columbia's salvaged Orbiter Experiment Support System (OEX) data recorder may offer a treasure-trove of technical data regarding the space plane's Feb. 1 breakup.
Late last week, the recently found recorder was taken to the Imation Corporation's Discovery Technology Center in Oakdale, Minnesota -- a firm specializing in data storage and handling.
Throughout last weekend, a team of NASA officials and company experts completed cleaning and stabilization of the recorder's magnetic tape.
The OEX recorder is designed to store sensor information about temperature, aerodynamic pressure, vibrations and other data from hundreds of sensor locations on Columbia. The hardware operates only during launch and re-entry. The OEX uses magnetic tape to record data that is not sent to the ground by telemetry.
Some damage
According to Imation, in opening the recorder it was found that most of the tape was still intact on both the supply reel and the take-up reel inside the device. The tape, however, had broken between the two.
A portion of the tape was stretched or wrinkled on both ends of the take-up and supply reels. According to Imation, most of the tape was in fairly good condition on visual inspection. There was some contamination inside the recorder from dirt and water that had accumulated on the tape from its impact on the ground.
The tape is 1-inch wide #799 instrumentation tape, which is a magnetic data recording tape made specifically for aerospace and government applications. The tape was mounted on two 14-inch reels, one supply reel of unrecorded tape and a take-up reel for tape that had recorded information.
Handled with care
Using a non-destructive process, Imation experts were able to pinpoint the place on the tape where it had stopped.
Working with a NASA-approved approach that would minimize any chance of data loss, a team began cleaning the tape by handimmersing the tape multiple times in a filtered de-ionized water bath.
The tape was then dried with a lint free cloth and nitrogen, allowed to air-dry overnight, and wound to the appropriate tension on the original hub with new flanges.
In a press statement, Imation said they did not read the tape, but did find that "a very valid piece of media" had been recovered.
Gold mine of data?
The tape was delivered to NASA on Tuesday for transfer to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where playback and dubbing of the data onto a new tape was slated.
According to NASA, freshly dubbed tapes are being sent at week's end to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and other facilities where analysis of the data by NASA and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) will occur.
Scott Hubbard, a CAIB member, said during a March 26 press briefing in Cape Canaveral, Florida that the OEX tape could be a "gold mine" of data about Columbia's final and fatal minutes of reentry. Analysis of the tape is set to begin at the Johnson Space Center next Monday, he said.
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