Aviation Week & Space Technology, often called "Aviation Leak" for its insightful, accurate, and unwelcome speculations on the more "black" portions of the aviation community, finally has news on Columbia. As the mainstream press monkeys go off to find something else to fling poo at, AvWeek is on the case and weighs in with this report on new Columbia developments. In summary:

• An Air Force ground tracking camera appears to have shown significant damage to the leading edge of Columbia's left wing 60 seconds before re-entry
• The orbiter's attitude control jets were firing as it hit the atmosphere to compensate for this apparent damage
• In spite of NASA's denials, the foam insulation still seems to have played a role in damaging this area.
• The leading edge materials are attached in a different way than the rest of the tiles (bolted rather than glued), and this may have played a role in the failure.
• The space station was completely out of reach of Columbia. Even if they had known about the damage ahead of time, the ISS would have provided no safe haven
• Had the damage been spotted beforehand, the best NASA could've done was fly a profile perhaps allowing the shuttle to make it low and slow enough to allow the crew to bail out.
• The wheel well area does not appear to have been breached, rather hot gasses were somehow making their way in.

The AvWeek guys (and gals) will be the ones providing (IMO) comprehensive, coherent coverage of this event. Most of the rest of the media lost interest after the bodies were recovered. Spectacular disaster and firey death sell advertising very well, but only for so long.