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Astronauts Prep Discovery For Saturday Landing
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CBS
When the space shuttle Discovery begins its fiery re-entry for landing at Cape Canaveral, NASA engineers will be keeping a close eye on a deliberately flawed thermal tile.
Tucked under Discovery's left wing, the single tile's design will increase the temperature of the 3-inch tiles around it as a test for future spacecraft designs that anticipate significantly more re-entry heat.
Called a "bump," the test tile will interrupt the normally smooth air flow around the existing tiles. The quarter-inch molded bump in the tile will be exposed to almost 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit during re-entry.
NASA will send a Navy airplane to fly below Discovery with an infrared camera to monitor the heating as the shuttle heads over the Gulf of Mexico for a landing in Florida.
Discovery is expected to land at 1:39 p.m.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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