As it lolled and lumbered through the ice floes, the ship slowly widened cracks and crumbled off bits of the unending white ice field ahead, creating around it a debris path of huge white boulders floating in the water.
Still, on the 113th flight since the shuttles were introduced in 1981, as Columbia was descending into the upper atmosphere over Texas toward a planned landing at Cape Canaveral, Fla., the multiple contrails of disintegrating machinery and a debris path across the landscape were haunting reminders that nothing in space flight is 100percentt safe.
Each year in mid-November, Earth and the debris cross paths, and the bits of comet, ranging in size from dust to marbles, fly into Earth's atmosphere at 155,000 miles per hour and burn up as streaks of light.
The two Army veterans along with two Navy veterans, three Marines, seven civilians and three supervisors, are part of a backcountry crew shoring up and clearing debris from paths that transport hikers from a world of Facebook into a more natural life, where encounters with sharp-smelling bear clover or the shrub's namesake are possible.
Mapping and air photo/GIS analysis indicated that the distributions of exotic plants were located on freshly scoured bars and floodplains adjacent to the active channel, downstream of seed sources along roads that were connected to the main stem of Lookout Creek by road ditch drainage systems, and debris flow paths.
Interaction of rock avalanche debris with path materials is the likely mechanism that governs the motion of many rock avalanches.
The Midwest storms, unusually strong for October, left fallen trees, power failures and debris in their paths.
The electrostatic detection of gas path debris has been proposed in literature as a tool to monitor mechanical component faults along the combustion gas path of turbo-machines.
Mr Hall says he saw the twister coming down the road toward his house, whipping up debris in its path.
