Space.com noted yesterday that the blurry photo presented at a news conference last week, previously reported as stemming from Air Force equipment, was actually produced at an Air Force base by hobbyist-quality equipment, including a 3 1/2 inch telescope and a Macintosh over a decade old.

Spaceflight Now covers the revelation yesterday of a NASA email outlining disaster scenarios with a peculiarly apologetic headline, “What-if email explained“; the story covers both the agency reaction to the email (‘nothing to see here, move along’) and also covers a telemetry reading which reported landing gear deployment at 8:59:06 am, 26 seconds prior to the loss of communications with the doomed craft. The sensor reading is described as the result of a sensor failure rather than a factual record of landing gear deployment at 12,500 mph.

Other developments have included positive identification of the crew’s remains, a revised timeline released by NASA today, and a public call from NASA for more amateur images in the wake of yesterday’s news concerning the blurry ‘Air Force’ photo.

A reasonably thorough search for blogs that are specifically oriented to space and NASA today did not turn up any. I believe I need to dig deeper – surely there’s a blogger out there writing about some of these issues from the inside.