https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/8d98af2c-a1f5-46e5-8d28-6af29420cc11 This 10-second video taken in February of 2005 shows a NASA F-15B taking off from Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert on a Lifting Insulating Foam Trajectory (LIFT) flight test. The Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew were lost during mission STS-107 on Feb. 1, 2003. As part of NASA’s Return to Flight effort, NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) approached NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (now Armstrong) for help in modeling thermal protection system foam loss from the Shuttle’s external fuel tank. Following the accident, Dryden geared up to provide flight data on foam loss requested by NASA engineers at JSC. Called the Lifting Insulating Foam Trajectory (LIFT) project, this effort used the Center's F-15B Research Testbed aircraft to acquire data on how insulating foam debris or "divots" behaved when the small pieces were shed from the Shuttle's external fuel tank during launch. The unique capabilities of NASA’s supersonic F-15B Research test bed aircraft enabled it to garner the LIFT data in a real flight environment at altitudes up to 50,000 ft. and at speeds up to Mach 2. The project continued NASA Dryden’s Shuttle program support of testing Shuttle insulating materials begun with F-104 and F-15 test bed aircraft early in the program. To learn more about the LIFT project visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/lift.html To learn more about NASA's F-15B Testbed visit: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-055-DFRC.html Mirrored from YouTube: https://youtu.be/HMmGLexu7ZY Original channel: NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center Wed, 15 Jul 2026 07:32:57 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://peertube.dngr.us https://peertube.dngr.us/lazy-static/avatars/ec5edb1e-3795-4978-be4f-c67e98fbc992.png https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/8d98af2c-a1f5-46e5-8d28-6af29420cc11 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://peertube.dngr.us/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.