Just three months after Charles J. Camarda flew on NASA’s pivotal STS-114 Space Shuttle mission in 2005, the astronaut paid a visit to Southern Research — and he brought souvenirs.

STS-114 was one of the most important Shuttle missions for a simple reason: It represented the “Return to Flight” for the space agency after the tragic loss of Columbia two years earlier.

Camarda served as a mission specialist on Discovery, which covered 5,796,419 miles and circled the Earth 219 times at speeds reaching nearly 17,700 miles per hour. During the mission, the Shuttle docked with the International Space Station, and the crew tested new flight-safety procedures and damage inspection and repair techniques.

Camarda visited Birmingham on Nov. 10, 2005, to talk with Southern Research engineering teams that had helped NASA understand how the Columbia accident unfolded and worked to devise new safeguards to prevent a repeat.

To show the Discovery crew’s gratitude, Camarda presented the engineers with a Southern Research banner that had been aboard the Shuttle during the 14-day mission. He also gave them a composite containing a U.S. flag that also had flown on STS-114.

The visit of Camarda, an aerospace engineer who had supervised NASA test facilities, represented a special moment for the Southern Research team.

“We’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Charlie on a series of efforts prior to his selection to fly on STS-114,” John Koenig, director of materials research, said at the time. “We share a heritage in materials engineering with Charlie, making this flight even more special in that ‘one of us’ was on board.”

ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION

Soon after the Columbia accident on Feb. 1, 2003, Koenig and the Southern Research team became heavily involved in a wide-ranging quest for answers to what had happened to the Shuttle.

NASA engaged Southern Research in multiple roles in the inquiry. The team looked into aspects of the obiter wing failure, triggered when super-heated gases entered through damaged tiles on the leading edge.

Engineers modeled the impact of the foam debris that struck the left wing’s leading edge 82 seconds after Columbia’s lift-off, causing the damage.

Impact tests were conducted on materials that could come off the launch system during lift-off: ice, insulating foam, composite materials, graphite from the booster separation system.

Southern Research engineers prepared specimens, conducted pre- and post-nondestructive evaluation, and studied damage modes. They also developed new testing techniques that avoided the release of debris from the booster separation motors.

In addition, the team evaluated whether the age of the carbon-carbon composites on the leading edge enhanced the probability of failure after repeated exposures to temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees.

The engineers also worked with teams that studied potential in-flight repairs to the Shuttle’s leading edge, such as patches, plugs, overwrap, and fillers. Astronaut Scott Parazynski acted as an adviser to the Southern Research team on this program.

‘SILVER SNOOPY’

After Discovery returned to Edwards Air Force Base in California to end STS-114 on Aug. 9, 2005, NASA didn’t mount another mission for almost another year. STS-121, launched on July 4, 2006, was considered the second “Return to Flight” mission for the Shuttle program.

On both of these missions, NASA had what it called “eyes in the sky” to record the lift-off and its climb toward orbit. High-flying WB-57 aircraft carried an innovative nose-mounted video system that allowed NASA to monitor the flight for debris impacts.

Southern Research’s Airborne Imaging and Recording System is still in use.

On STS-121, Discovery again returned to the International Space Station, and the crew continued to test new equipment for the in-flight inspection and repair of the Shuttle’s thermal protection system.

After the mission, NASA decided that the Shuttle was prepared to resume its scheduled flights.

That year, Koenig received a Silver Snoopy Award, an honor given by NASA astronauts for contributions that improve the success and safety of space flight.

This is Part Seven of a series looking at the history of Southern Research.

• Part One: A visionary creates a lab to lift industry and a region
• Part Two: Improving peanut butter and other early projects
• Part Three: Ben May’s gift launches a cancer program
• Part Four: ‘Boss Kettering’ provides key early support
• Part Five: Helping Apollo spacecraft beat fiery re-entry
• Part Six: Labs spin out new fabrics and capabilities

When the Apollo 11 flight crew returned from the historic Moon expedition on July 24, 1969, their command module pierced the Earth’s atmosphere traveling at 36,237 feet per second and became engulfed in a fireball burning at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The capsule’s heat shield – developed with input from Southern Research – protected the astronauts, with a special epoxy resin in the shield’s honeycomb backing structure dissipating the intense heat while vaporizing in the hellish environment.

Long before the Apollo 11 crew splashed down in the Pacific, Southern Research’s expertise in high-temperature testing provided NASA with important information about the materials being considered for the spacecraft’s thermal protection system.

Under contracts with NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia during the 1960s, Southern Research engineers working in test facilities exposed specimens of various classes of materials to the harsh conditions of re-entry, including temperatures nearly three times the melting point of steel.

In rigorous evaluations under extreme conditions, Southern Research engineers recorded more than a dozen different thermal and mechanical properties of the heat shield materials. Afterwards, mathematical models were developed to predict actual performance during re-entry.

AN UNUSUAL ‘BALL OF STRING’

Before the Apollo program even got off the ground, Birmingham-based Southern Research had performed high-temperature work for government sponsors and aerospace companies, beginning in the 1950s. Under the guidance of Coultas “Colt” Pears, its high-temp testing lab gained an international reputation for work on advanced materials like carbon-carbon composites.

Pears recalled that he first saw the exotic composite material early on, when “a fellow walked in with a ball of string and asked me to dip it in sugar water and heat it to 5000°F.”

“It was 15 years before the material became a heat shield or nose tip,” he said.

In addition to work on the space program, Southern Research engineers conducted important materials evaluation work on key U.S. missile systems. In 1967, the U.S. Navy recognized the organization’s role in the development of the Polaris missile system with a special award.

Pears’ ambition at Southern Research was to create a world-class high-temperature materials characterization laboratory. His lab developed a facility that could make accurate measurements of loads on brittle high-temperature metals. Another innovation involved new optical strain measurement techniques.

The first known measurements of tensile properties at 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit took place at Southern Research, and extreme-temperature testing and analysis became a core competency of the organization.

ASSISTING APOLLO SPACECRAFT

Southern Research’s contributions to the Apollo program weren’t limited to materials evaluation.

Engineers were involved in several instrument development programs. One of those focused on the design of a radiometer that was paired with a telescope to take temperature readings on the Moon’s surface. The instrument was part of a critical NASA program to select landing sites for Apollo missions to the lunar surface.

In another Apollo project, Southern Research engineers used graphite sensing elements to build several calorimeters to measure heating rates on various portions of the Saturn booster exit.

Other groups at Southern Research also got involved in work on the Apollo spacecraft program.

Around the time of the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, the organization established onsite laboratory operations at Kennedy Space Center to support contractors involved in launches of the giant Saturn rockets. The 25 staffers evaluated spacecraft materials and attempted to pinpoint the causes of malfunctions in connections.

At that time, chemist Ruby James was Southern Research’s specialist in gas chromatography, a means to separate the different components of a mixture by forcing gas through a column.

The program at Kennedy Space Center ran for two years.

After the last Apollo mission, Southern Research remained active in the nation’s space program, making important contributions to the Space Shuttle and working on projects including the Voyager probe and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Today, Southern Research engineers are involved in the Space Launch System, a NASA project that aims to put man on Mars.

This is Part Five of a series looking at the history of Southern Research.

• Part One: A visionary creates a lab to lift industry and a region
• Part Two: Improving peanut butter and other early projects
• Part Three: Ben May’s gift launches a cancer program
• Part Four: ‘Boss Kettering’ provides key early support