NASA bombshell: How Space Shuttle Challenger remains washed ashore – ‘Astonishing!’

“Astonishingly, the Challenger incident happened 22 miles away from Cocoa Beach, and over a decade earlier.”

One piece was identified by NASA engineers as Challenger’s left inboard wing flap, or elevon, a segment from the base of the shuttle’s left wing that helped steer the orbiter during entry and landing.

The second piece came ashore several metres to the south and engineers believed it broke away from the larger piece.

Ron Phelps, a NASA project manager at the Florida spaceport, said he was surprised such a large piece of wreckage managed to find its way ashore from more than a dozen miles out to sea where it originally landed.

He explained in 1996: “This piece, structurally, is the complete inboard elevon of the left-wing, and that’s like eight feet on one end by six feet on the other by 14 feet long.

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