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Data recovered from Columbia Space shuttle disaster!

spaceandtechnology.com — Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes.

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  • spaceandtech, on 05/10/2008, -12/+3Thats great! how this guys do this!!!!!!
    • aenima987, on 05/10/2008, -1/+5rtfa
      • fyrehart, on 05/10/2008, -2/+8It's funny because he actually submitted the article and probably wrote it too - his name is spaceandtech while the name of the site is spaceandtechnology.com

        Also, citation needed on submission.
    • Shadowgamers, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1Witchcraft obviously
    • thcobbs, on 05/10/2008, -1/+2Likely they disassemble it in a clean room and use highly sensitive magnetic devices to prune the data from the drive manually.
  • fyrehart, on 05/10/2008, -0/+65The space shuttle runs DOS? Really?
    • FizixMan, on 05/10/2008, -1/+38Would you prefer Windows ME?
    • aajjcckk, on 05/10/2008, -30/+5Thank ***** it doesn't run any version of Windows - esp Vista, or there'd be a Shuttle disaster every mission. God save us all from Micro$hite, I mean Microsoft...
      • Synapse84, on 05/10/2008, -0/+27I hate Microsoft as well, but putting "Micro$hite" or "M$" or any other variations makes you look like a complete retard.
      • MattNF, on 05/10/2008, -3/+12Putting "*****" with an "e" at the end makes you look like a complete retard as well.
        • Monk22, on 05/10/2008, -5/+3unless hes british in which case your just an ass.
    • jstohler, on 05/10/2008, -1/+12Let's not get too worked up. It sounds like one data-storing activity was running DOS.
      • JMSantos, on 05/10/2008, -4/+5Agreed. A simple task of storing data, it makes sense to use 3rd party software. For the more complex precision work, I'm assuming Nasa uses a rather intricate and highly specialized, custom built operating system
        • MiDri, on 05/10/2008, -8/+2Ya, like linux!
        • pyronik, on 05/10/2008, -5/+3haha ....yea... im sure they loaded ubuntu with open office and made sure the abided by all GNU and GPL liscenses and *****

        • NeptuneZen, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2Actually netbsd is used quite often by nasa.
    • jongos, on 05/10/2008, -9/+1@fyrehart It went down didn't it.
    • poopdigger, on 05/10/2008, -2/+1This specific xenon-related experiment sure did.
    • superspud, on 05/10/2008, -0/+30Yeah the space shuttle's computer systems run on very old hardware, P3 CPU's in fact (if I remember right). When they were making the 'new' computer system, they did countless man hours of testing and spent millions to make sure the system would work no matter what. The system does everything they would ever need, and is (as close to) perfect as you can get. Changing the CPU would mean changing a lot of the firmware and software made specifically for the shuttle - so they never saw the need.

      So although it is man-kind's most advanced space vehicle, the on board computer's can't run Crysis. Cool eh?
      • FleetAdmiral, on 05/10/2008, -1/+11This was one of the most well constructed and educated response I've ever read in Digg, you superspud get a cookie!
    • thcobbs, on 05/10/2008, -3/+2The space shuttles run their own proprietary OS. Unfortunately due to initial design constraints, the computers have very little memory and the entire launch program can not be loaded into memory at once.
    • applemachome, on 05/10/2008, -2/+3Its like navy ships and etc...they use a system they know works in all situations. It does nothing more than they need and nothing less, but more importantly, os extremely reliable. If they find a particular version of dos to do what they need, they use that version and then make sure their software will never have issues. Although the age of a 320MB drive would worry me unless it was a new 320MB drive somehow
      • MasterGrief, on 05/10/2008, -3/+1I'm sure that NASA could afford to build new ones.
      • NeptuneZen, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2Like the navy... I sure to god hope not. Navy doesn't use older software because its more reliable (its not), they use older software because it takes years to approve software for use onboard ship. And thats not due to extensive testing, its just that the navy is a big inefficient bureaucracy.
    • reportermilan, on 05/10/2008, -2/+2I doubt Shuttle runs DOS. Probably he meant that the filesystem was FAT, which was introduced in DOS.
      • pyronik, on 05/10/2008, -2/+1why not it was just storing experimentation type stuff not launch and mission critical type of stuff
  • jongos, on 05/10/2008, -4/+2It's pretty amazing that this guy succeeded at this!
  • Totz83, on 05/10/2008, -10/+4... Data confirms assplosion
  • crashbang, on 05/10/2008, -2/+20An WHY didn't we elect this guy to be the democratic nominee? Man he can do everything!!!.....oh wait.
    • davidlow, on 05/10/2008, -0/+7He was also a TV psychic who talked to your dead relatives, 10 years ago. He gets around.
      • kirkio, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1that's John *Edward* (no 's')
      • davidlow, on 05/10/2008, -0/+5Even though the 's' was dead he could still communicate with it.
  • 420ilerBuzzed, on 05/10/2008, -0/+34Impressive.
    Less impressive - that website.
    • yojiffyskippy, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1You would think he'd be able to create a better website.... I'm just sayin.
  • justintime32, on 05/10/2008, -1/+7340 MB? Wow...
    • RGSPro, on 05/10/2008, -3/+3I know they should'ev replaced that hard drive with an ipod shuffle, then they could'ev checked if those female astronauts were pregnant, too.
  • WTFppl, on 05/10/2008, -1/+2Jon Edwards, what a smart guy!
    • aflaks, on 05/10/2008, -0/+3it is amazing how heavily damaged an HD has to be for information to escape its grasp. True, it may not load within your normal OS but profession recovery techniques have little difficulty recovering information.
  • BigglesPiP, on 05/10/2008, -0/+13Spaceandtechnology.com have never heard of web standards it seems.
    • Scynet, on 05/10/2008, -1/+2Oh well, at least the site loads pretty fast, and it's not too bad for the eye either.
    • protogenxl, on 05/10/2008, -0/+3I feel like beating the webmaster with a hard copy of the XML specification.
  • aflaks, on 05/10/2008, -2/+1Mirror?
  • mavownsyou, on 05/10/2008, -1/+10So you don't have to load IE to use this horrible website:
    (AP) -- Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes.
    Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.
    "When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted," said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. "It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot."
    During Columbia's fateful mission, the drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment on the properties of liquid xenon.
    Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia's voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a science journal, Physical Review E.
    That led Kroll Ontrack to share details of its salvage effort.
    Columbia broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, killing its seven astronauts. The shuttle had been damaged at launch by foam insulation that fell off an external fuel tank.
    Like other Columbia debris, the mangled disk drive turned up in Texas. It was six months after the disaster when a NASA contractor sent the drive to Kroll Ontrack, which specializes in data recovery.
    Edwards had reason for pessimism. Not only were the drive's metal and plastic elements scorched, but the seal on the side that keeps out dirt and dust also had melted. That made the drive vulnerable to particles that can scratch the tiny materials embedded inside, destroying their ability to retain data in endless 0s or 1s, depending on their magnetic charge.
    However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not yet been written.
    Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives as other approaches do.
    After cleaning the platters with a chemical solution, Edwards used them in a newly built drive. The process -- two days from start to finish -- captured 99 percent of the drive's information.
    Edwards was gratified.
    And to drive home just what a long shot his recovery had been, he later had no success with two other drives found in Columbia's wreckage. Blasted by the unfathomable furnace of entry into the atmosphere, their metals had lost the ability to hold a magnetic charge.(AP NEWS)
    • Skootles, on 05/10/2008, -2/+3Rendered perfectly fine in Opera..
    • janzendavi, on 05/11/2008, -0/+1And IETab in Firefox nailed it too!
  • hollywoodphony, on 05/10/2008, -5/+4The biggest douche in the universe did that?
    • temsi, on 05/10/2008, -1/+4You're thinking of John Edward, that self-proclaimed medium asshole.
      • WilliamDavis, on 05/11/2008, -1/+3No, he was thinking of the pretty boy presidential candidate who tried to gank our man Obama.
        • hollywoodphony, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2No, I was thinking I was on a site that would catch a south park reference. My bad. Go family guy!
  • 75489, on 05/10/2008, -8/+1Excellent news!! Now we'll know if the Columbia crew was rickrolled before or during re-entry.
  • kirkio, on 05/10/2008, -6/+7"...but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full"
    340 megs!? That's it? I have six times as much storage on my keychain!
    • michael43, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1So you have 2 Gigs of Porn....who cares?
    • electromage, on 05/11/2008, -0/+1That's it? I have four times that!
  • BobSutan, on 05/10/2008, -0/+4Moral of the story: if you ever want to truly destroy the data on the drive you have to make the metals inside incapable of holding a magnetic charge, otherwise the data is still potentially recoverable. Granted you may as well melt it down to slag since you're ruining the drive for good, but if you're in a pinch a solid dose of degaussing should do the trick.
  • TheDelta9, on 05/10/2008, -6/+6"They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not yet been written.
    Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS "

    WTF nasa?!?! DOS.... 340 megabyte drives... what happened to space age technology?
    • protogenxl, on 05/10/2008, -0/+2That is space age Technology, In the 1970s.
  • RGSPro, on 05/10/2008, -4/+4340mb HARD DRIVE? What a waste of weight on a space shuttle.
  • OSuX, on 05/10/2008, -4/+1It was probably a Seagate, no lesser drive could have retained data under the circumstances.
  • Mapeki, on 05/10/2008, -11/+2The first thing I thought was.. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2384/1523829237_c27 ...

    And then I was disappointed.
  • Mapeki, on 05/10/2008, -12/+2The first thing I thought was - http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2384/1523829237_c27 ...

    and then I was sad.
  • Mapeki, on 05/10/2008, -12/+2The first thing I thought was - http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2384/1523829237_c27 ...

    Then I was sad
  • DigitAl56K, on 05/10/2008, -0/+6@the "340MB?!" posts, if you think about it, lower data density probably reduced the liklihood of errors and improved the chances of data recovery after an accident. For a space shuttle choosing older, tested components with a low probability of failure probably pays off most of the time.
  • mfurufuru, on 05/10/2008, -2/+6FYI this site does not support Firefox and you need to install IE to read it.
    • DigitAl56K, on 05/10/2008, -1/+3FYI I'm reading it in Firefox right now.
    • lennybird, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1No, all you have to do is highlight from the first bit you can see and copy and paste into notepad to read...
    • beingdevious, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1or use IE tab, disable CSS, or copypasta...

      why in gods name would you INSTALL IE willlingly?
      • buddypriefert, on 05/10/2008, -0/+1Hehe, wow, you are such a coooool rebel. Yeah, MS sucks!! Yeah yeah. Um....Linux rulez.

        Please....in case you can't understand sarcasm, get over it and move on.
        • beingdevious, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1not a rebel, i just prefer to use the internet when im on it, not be warned about and plagued by every tiny broken piece of code in existent...
    • electromage, on 05/11/2008, -0/+1How am I supposed to install IE in Linux?
  • Ev3nt372, on 05/10/2008, -2/+1Astronauts bring along laptops for their personal computing needs so the OS pf the shuttle doesn't matter as long as it works.
  • GRHooked, on 05/10/2008, -2/+1Wow, idiots, John Edwards was the democratic nominee, not Jon Edwards.
  • megaton, on 05/10/2008, -2/+4Wouldn't redundant flash drives be a more reliable alternative?
    • TRENT310, on 05/10/2008, -1/+2Not in this case. (Maybe the IronKey.) But most flash drives are just ICs and circuit boards, which all burn easily (a mishap with a soldering iron can do it) and that doesn't really seem too reliable. Reliable for mechanical shock, not so reliable for heat stress. And redundancy doesn't help too much when all of them are experiencing the same sort of damage.

      So, my suggestion for a reliable alternative for data storage on a space shuttle is really to _not_ store it, and send everything back to Earth, and make sure the RF equipment, coax lines and all, are "black boxed" and the last things to burn up in case of explosion. Although that might be a little too much time and effort for something that everyone hopes never happens.
    • megaton, on 05/11/2008, -0/+1They did send everything back to Earth, but the last few seconds didn't make the transition.

      Regardless, a 9-inch-thick box of ceramic and steel won't protect NAND flash memory? If they can protect 6 humans with 2 inches of ceramic upon Earth re-entry, I'm sure it could do the trick for some ICs. Mechanical failure is by far the biggest threat in this kind of situation, which is why you don't want hardware knocking around in the event of a physical disruption...

      (And redundancy never hurt anyone.)
  • super3boy, on 05/10/2008, -2/+2I think this article might be wrong. According to Engadget or Gizmodo the drive was 340 GB or something to the sort. Who knows what else is inaccurate about that page.
    • TRENT310, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1I really don't think DOS can properly support 340GB, or that might be why it only used a small area of the disk. However, data recovery from high density drives is many times more difficult than from something that is relatively low density, eg. 340MB, coupled with the fact that the hardware suffered major damage.
  • jfp51, on 05/10/2008, -1/+1Yes, the computers used on the Shuttle are old. They go through stringent testing to ensure flawless performance once up there. A good article from the NYT: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0 ...

    Now I feel old, DOS is "ancient"????
  • tracywood, on 05/10/2008, -3/+3So they can recover this, but they can't recover the indestructible flight data recorders from 911.
    Yeah BS!
    • Vet4Peace, on 05/11/2008, -0/+1Oh, get over it. Your 911 conspiracy doesn't pass the smell test.
  • ShuttleDisaster, on 05/10/2008, -2/+2I think its my obligation to post a comment on this story.
  • sheasie, on 05/10/2008, -4/+1We can pull data from an gigantic explosion throwing bits and pieces into miles of ocean, and yet we can't extract data from 911 ?? (Riiiiiight.)
  • IDiggDrSiN, on 05/10/2008, -2/+3Welcome to digg where everything non Obama in the comments gets dug down

    /- 100 will do me.
    • michael43, on 05/10/2008, -2/+1You are right, but you know...it is an Obama Harem.
  • protogenxl, on 05/10/2008, -0/+3What about the White House email system? Could he recover emails that were deleted about 62 months ago?
  • jplily, on 05/10/2008, -0/+0Jon Edwards, what a smart guy!
  • Reeses2150, on 05/10/2008, -0/+2Dugg for "The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS."
  • Whoopteedoo, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1Buried for not telling us what data was recovered--like why the ***** shuttle crashed on re-entry! Nice drama queen way to plug the company you work for, though, buddy!
  •  

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