The nose of the shuttle encounters more intense heat then the rest of the shuttle during reentry because of the friction it encounters from the atmosphere. The nose of the shuttle has a small surface area for the with weight of the shuttle pushing it through the atmosphere. This leads to a more focus point of contract with the atmosphere.
Space Shuttle Challenger failed during launch. Space Shuttle Columbia failed during reentry.
The maximum acceleration that was experienced during normal shuttle liftoff was about 3g. During reentry, astronauts experienced approximately 1.5g.
They are thermal heat protection tiles. They help the Space Shuttle withstand 3,000+ F during reentry.
no, all the astronauts on the final mission of columbia died during reentry.
Columbia
As the shuttle reaches entry interface, the point where it starts to feel the effects of the atmosphere, it is traveling at about Mach 24.5 or about 24,000 miles per hour.
The leading edges of the Space Shuttle's wings get to almost 3000 deg F during a normal reentry into earth's atmosphere.
Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just a few seconds into a flight in 1986. Space Shuttle Columbia exploded during its reentry in 2003.
When an object moves through the air very, very fast the air pressing on the object gets extremely hot (thousands of degrees). This happens to the Shuttle when it reenters the Earth's atmosphere at the end of every mission. There are panels on the Shuttle that protect it from this heat during reentry. When Colombia was launched a piece of insulating foam on the big orange fuel tank came off and hit the wing of the Shuttle (the Orbiter) making a hole in these protective panels. Later, during reentry, this let the hot gasses generated during reentry to get inside the wing. This began a set of cascading failures that resulted in the Shuttle dissentigrating -- breaking up. It did not crash, it dissentirated in the air.
Only one space shuttle exploded during takeoff. That shuttle was the Challenger, which exploded on January 28, 1986. The only other space shuttle to be destroyed was the Columbia, which disintegrated on reentry on February 1, 2003.
The leading edges of the Shuttle, which get hottest during reentry, are protected by panels made of reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) that are fixed to the vessel's structural skeleton by floating joints to allow for differences in thermal expansion. The RCC panels can tolerate a maximum temperature of 1,630°C.
Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds into flight on January 28, 1986 Columbia was destroyed during reentry on February 1, 2003