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Atlantis' Lost & Found
By Paul Hoversten
Washington D.C. Bureau Chief
posted: 11:00 am ET
18 April 2000
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atlantis_returns_side WASHINGTON -- Tearing a shuttle apart can yield more than the usual dust balls, lint and hair. Boeing technicians in Palmdale, California who clean and outfit NASA's four shuttles have found coins, ink pens, a socket and a contact lens behind bulkhead panels or buried deep in the recesses of the spacecraft. The origins are unknown. Any or all could have floated away from astronauts in orbit, hiding in places that could only be found once the shuttles were dismantled back on Earth. Anything technicians remove or replace from shuttles, like worn or obsolete parts, is returned to NASA. But "foreign-object debris" is tossed in the trash. Managers want to return the vehicle spotless because any overlooked debris could pose serious problems in space, either to the astronauts or to the shuttle's sensitive equipment. Atlantis turned up fairly clean during its 10-month makeover. About the only unusual thing was a Q-tip spotted behind an instrument panel in the cockpit. How it got there was anyone's guess. Space Shuttle Endeavour probably had the weirdest piece of debris when it came to California for an inspection and tune-up in 1996. Workers found a small, mummified tree frog under a panel in the rear of the shuttle's cargo bay. Because California has no tree frogs, technicians assumed the amphibian must have jumped or crawled aboard sometime after Endeavour landed at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and before it was ferried to Palmdale atop a Boeing 747. Legend has it the frog was one piece of foreign-object debris that never made it to the trash. It was destined for a nobler fate -- entombed in a block of clear plastic as a desk paperweight.
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