Piece Description

Pat Duggins, News Director of WMFE-FM and National Public Radio's resident "NASA expert", is your host for this updated version of the documentary "Countdown Discovery". This new program follows up "Columbia Remembered...Atlantis, Go for Launch", which aired on over 100 NPR affiliates in 2004. This program goes behind the scenes of the first Space Shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster and looks at major changes coming for the Shuttle and the U.S. Space Program. Countdown Discovery also examines issues like the critical refurbishment to the fuel tank that shed foam insulation during Columbia's fatal flight, killing the Astronauts. We'll also look back at the Challenger disaster, through the eyes of ten year old students who witnessed NASA's first shuttle disaster. Nineteen years later, the mid-morning accident is still vivid to the teachers and students visiting the Cape for what they thought would be a routine shuttle launch. Also, with the end of the Space Shuttle program looming, residents of Brevard County, home of the Kennedy Space Center, are anxious over the same economic downturn that occurred following the end of the Apollo manned moon landings.