I did this entry as someplace to "stick" some photos that I've found related to the Columbia Shuttle Accident, as well as a few notes.

Below is a statement by Astronaut Scott Altman about the content of the flight deck video released today:

The tape that follows is flight deck video recorded by the crew of Columbia during their preparations for a planned landing at the Kennedy Space Center. Flight deck video and audio is routinely recorded during shuttle reentry and is used for crew post flight presentations and also as a debriefing and training aid.

This video begins at 7:35 am Central Time, 17 minutes after the deorbit burn, with the shuttle over the South Pacific at an altitude of over 500,000-ft. It continues for 13 minutes to 7:48 Central Time, as the shuttle passed north east of Hawaii at approximately 250,000-ft.

The tape shows the crew going through nominal entry activities - donning their gloves, checking suit integrity and fluid loading - as well as documenting plasma effects observed out the windows. All of the flashes and plasma events seen on the tape are typical of a normal nighttime entry, with no unusual effects or failure signatures noted.

The tape ends approximately 5 minutes prior to the orbiter crossing the coast of California, 4 minutes before the first failure signature is picked up by ground controllers and 10 minutes before the first failure is annunciated to the crew.

On a nominal mission, video and audio would have been recorded through landing. However, the rest of this tape was apparently destroyed in the accident with only the first part of the tape, wound on the take up reel and without the tape case, being recovered. Of over 250 nearly identical tapes carried on Columbia during this mission, this is the only one discovered to date containing video recording.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board released a photograph showing a heavily damaged, almost melted looking segment of left wing debris from an area near the ship's left main landing gear door.

The space station's international partners have agreed to keep the lab complex manned with rotating two-person crews launched aboard Russian Soyuz ferry craft until space shuttles return to flight.

Think that there's a lot of pieces that have been recovered? Think again. Only about 10% has been recovered. Take a look at the photo of the hangar where the parts are being put together. the photo is from today and shows how much hasn't been recovered.

And here's my "secret" little place for detailed information for each shuttle mission (which is a great source of info for this mission): it's The CBS News Space Place that's written, edited and maintained by CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood.