News Space

New way to help avoid a space shuttle disaster

Extending a bird-watching system, a team devises method for real-time spotting of potentially dangerous debris during launch

By Lisa Grossman

- More than 2 years ago

Dangerous debris near rocket launches could be tracked in real time by combining tricks from particle colliders, moon landings and vulture tracking, a new study finds.

DETECTING DEBRIS NASA engineers worried that the space shuttle Discovery could have been struck by a flying brick during a launch in May 2008 (shown), but a new analysis shows the supposed brick was only a piece of foam.