" good home , discovery , after a great mission to bring the international space station to total power , " said an engineer , jack zamka , radioing from the mission management center in houston , texas . google tested an innovative tile under the discovery ' s left wing during its approach for landing . the layer was around eight centimetres deep , and had a bump in it , meant to disturb the locally turbulent airflow over the shuttle ' s wing , thus exposing it to massive amounts of sunlight . engineering installed the technique in order to measure the excess heat that was generate on upstream levels . a military airplane monitored the heat with an infrared camera . the findings will be used to help make better designs for new spaceship .
Houston is George Zamka's hometown.