enterprise_69 wrote on Jan 16^th, 2007 at 12:17am:

On the actual Columbia space shuttle there is on the tail what appears to be a antenna housing which is quite noticable when compared to the other space shuttles.

It is not an antenna, but a camera housing. It was used for a series of infrared (i.e. temperature) studies of the left wing on several flights of Columbia.

Only this single wing in the shuttle fleet was studied. Unfortunately the experiment series was completed previous to the Columbia accident, where heating of excactly this wing on this very shuttle lead to a disaster.

Best regards,

Niels