Space Shuttle Columbia News Thread [Archive]

STIBROKER

02-01-03, 01:19 PM

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/TECH/space/02/01/shuttle.debris.ap/story.texas.debris.ap.jpg

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/01/shuttle.debris.ap/index.html

Debris falls in Nacogdoches, Texas
Saturday, February 1, 2003 Posted: 1:06 PM EST (1806 GMT)

NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) -- Bits of machinery and other metal debris were found strewn across the city on Saturday morning, hours after space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas.

"It's all over Nacogdoches," said James Milford, owner of Milford Barber shop downtown. "There are several little pieces, some parts of machinery. There's been a lot of pieces about 3 feet wide."

NASA lost contact with the spaceship while it was at an altitude of about 40 miles and traveling at six times the speed of sound.

Nacogdoches, situated in the piney woods region of East Texas, 135 miles northeast of Houston, activated its emergency operations center and sent emergency crews to the reported debris.

"At this point we're just trying to get it out to the public to not touch or tamper with this debris in any manner due to the possibility of toxic substances being on the debris," police spokesman Greg Sowell said.

We have one large [tank], several foot in diameter, some type of tank that was in the middle of a runway.
-- Ed Rohner, Nacogdoches airport manager

At this point we're just trying to get it out to the public to not touch or tamper with this debris in any manner due to the possibility of toxic substances being on the debris.
-- Greg Sowell, Nacogdoches police spokesman

National Guardsmen were sent to protect the debris.

Jeff Hancock, a 29-year-old dentist, said he found a chunk of debris in his office. "It came through the roof of my office. It's about a foot-long metal bracket," he said.

Ed Rohner, Nacogdoches airport manager, said some type of tank ended up on a runway.

"We have one large, several foot in diameter, some type of tank that was in the middle of a runway. We've got pieces of debris all along the entrance road to the airport," Rohner said. "I don't know what it is. It's a large, round metal tank, several feet in diameter."

R.T. Gregory, a waiter at Aubrey's Cafe in Nacogdoches, said he and about 50 other people gathered around a taped-off piece of metal debris in the parking lot of the Commercial Bank of Texas. He said the debris was about 4 feet long and 4 feet wide.

"There was a lot of people coming, I guess just wanting to see it," Gregory said.

Freak

02-01-03, 01:23 PM

Dan Rather just read some statements from bagdahd. you could tell he was about to go off on the people who said those things, but showed much more restraint than i could have done. Good job Dan!

Pistol Pete

02-01-03, 02:49 PM

:cry:

Pistol Pete

02-01-03, 03:36 PM

I hope the Iraqis realize, that because of the comments made by their government, that when our people get in there that revenge for those statements may be very harsh. I do hope there are NO prisoners taken by our forces. None.

J.Se

02-01-03, 04:13 PM

I'm with you Pete. When I heard what those bastards are saying my first reaction was, "So when do we get to go in and kick their asses?" Screw them.

I just saw some footage of the Columbia astronauts as they prepared to board the shuttle, smiling and waving. :cry:

It reminded me (of course) of the Challenger disaster.

"For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.

I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." -- Ronald Reagan, January 28, 1986

JasmineDreamz

02-01-03, 05:54 PM

Words alone are inadequate to express my emotions over this tragedy. The Columbia crew, their family and friends will be in my thoughts and prayers.

shotglass

02-01-03, 09:10 PM

My condolences to the families of those lost in this tragedy. Though it may be small comfort, they died doing what they loved, in a good and just cause. They will be remembered as heroes.

As for Iraq, stand the f*** by, we're going to be there soon, and Allah is not going to help you.

Pistol Pete

02-01-03, 09:14 PM

I just read a line from a NASA official that said there was nothing the astronauts could do in orbit to remedy the problem.
The Space Station is a docking station, or, garage. If NASA had told them about the hit to the wing, they could have docked and investigated. Upon finding missing and damaged tiles, a second shuttle could have brought the parts and epoxy needed to make the repairs.
To say there was nothing that could be done is bullshit! The Apollo 13 guys had extensive damage and managed to make the repairs to return to Earth and they only had what was on board.

Eddy's Geist

02-01-03, 10:00 PM

Pete, yes.. NASA could and would do what was necessary to keep the astronauts alive and to keep a craft like the Columbia intact. The shuttles lose tiles on every flight and while it's not fabulous, it's also not that serious of an issue.
If a concentrated amount of tiles were to be displaced then there would be a serious issue.

While I don't know a thing about the Columbia's itinerary this trip... I'd say it's safe to say that after the launch and once the craft was in orbit... NASA told the crew what happened and the crew investigated it as much as they were able to. Either the crew found little to no damage or they found some serious damage. If it was serious then NASA and the crew would confer to see if it was repairable and if this wasn't possible then a decision on how best to re-enter the atmosphere would have been developed. The crew may have known all along that there was a chance that they might not re-enter safely. The damage may have been severe but not so severe that a backup shuttle was required. If this was the case and the decision was made not to send up a backup then this choice would have been agreed upon by both NASA and the crew.

Pistol Pete

02-01-03, 10:29 PM

The shuttles have to maintain a nose-up attitude of just a few degrees, so there's not much room for error on re-entry. The forces are tremendous on those craft. Any weakness can become paramount. I doubt any astronaut went outside and checked the ship. In any event, the crew would have had to, and could have, docked with the ISS and waited for a repair flight to come in. Working in space has come a long way since the Apollo shots. I watched astronauts working on Hubble, live. They went about their business and got the telescope working correctly. Those tiles could have been replaced. People can always overcome adversity when the chips are down. We always have. :thumbsup:

Laurie

02-01-03, 11:48 PM

:cry: My heart goes out to their friends and family. As tragic as it may be, at least they left this world accomplishing probably their biggest dream. They are definately heroes.

Pistol Pete

02-02-03, 12:03 AM

Laurie, I'd go into space in a heartbeat. The unbounding search for why we are is the greatest quest.
I've wanted to explore space since I was a kid. We got to see the launches on black & white TVs in the auditorium. To me that is the final frontier.
I salute all who go to the stars :thumbsup: :worthy:

Rguess21

02-02-03, 02:16 AM

Originally posted by Eddy's Geist
Pete, yes.. NASA could and would do what was necessary to keep the astronauts alive and to keep a craft like the Columbia intact. The shuttles lose tiles on every flight and while it's not fabulous, it's also not that serious of an issue.
If a concentrated amount of tiles were to be displaced then there would be a serious issue.

While I don't know a thing about the Columbia's itinerary this trip... I'd say it's safe to say that after the launch and once the craft was in orbit... NASA told the crew what happened and the crew investigated it as much as they were able to. Either the crew found little to no damage or they found some serious damage. If it was serious then NASA and the crew would confer to see if it was repairable and if this wasn't possible then a decision on how best to re-enter the atmosphere would have been developed. The crew may have known all along that there was a chance that they might not re-enter safely. The damage may have been severe but not so severe that a backup shuttle was required. If this was the case and the decision was made not to send up a backup then this choice would have been agreed upon by both NASA and the crew.

Eddy, the commander of this shuttle is from my home town & the pilot is from the next "large"town down the road so out local new has a different twist. I had to pull a 12 hour shift today, but I did catch (on the broadcasts) some differences in what you have posted. They mentioned that because of the payload, especially thee numerous medical excperiments to be carried out, the robotic camera arm which could have scanned the exterior for damage, wasn't on this flight, and that scenario isn't that uncommon, They went on to say there wasn't any other way to check for any damage in that, or several other sections. They didn't say anything about there docking capibilities, however. If the launch incident was indeed the cause, I doubt that NASA nor the shuttle thought the launch incident was that important, since all the instrumentaion readings were fine clear up to moments before the disaster.

As far as the itinery, etc., try http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov , & use the NASA Human Spaceflight section at the top for easier navagation.

Laurie

02-02-03, 09:12 AM

Originally posted by Pistol Pete
Laurie, I'd go into space in a heartbeat. The unbounding search for why we are is the greatest quest.
I've wanted to explore space since I was a kid. We got to see the launches on black & white TVs in the auditorium. To me that is the final frontier.
I salute all who go to the stars :thumbsup: :worthy:

I wouldn't hesitate for a second going into space. Wow, what an experience THAT would be.

STIBROKER

02-02-03, 09:42 AM

man....they are finding body parts in the hemphill area.....man thats the shits.......but at least some of the familys can bury there loved ones for a end to all this .......

Pistol Pete

02-02-03, 11:41 AM

To our latest heros, I pray you are in God's house and now know all the things you were hoping to discover in this life. Your commitment to the wonderous search of the heavens for the betterment of mankind was not in vain and will be followed by countless others as we reach across the stars to fulfill the quests of explorers before you, from the first nomads who crossed the continents in search of "what's new", to yourselves.
Thanks. :Angel: :Peck:

shotglass

02-02-03, 03:36 PM

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Tony Snow made a comment in his parting thoughts that I thought was pretty good. I don't remember it verbatim, but it was something to the effect of "They have gone from the heavens, to Heaven".

JasmineDreamz

02-02-03, 05:40 PM

Very eloquently put Pete.

evereno

02-02-03, 05:51 PM

Nasa chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings (The Observer) - Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.

In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'.

During his last 11 years at Nasa, Nelson served as a mission operations evaluator for proposed advanced space transportation projects. He was on the initial design team for the space shuttle. He participated in every shuttle upgrade until his retirement.

Listing a series of mishaps with shuttle missions since 1999, Nelson warned in his letter that Nasa management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident. Since 1999 the vehicle had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems:

· 1999 - Columbia's launch was delayed by a hydrogen leak and Discovery was grounded with damaged wiring, contaminated engine and dented fuel line;

· January 2000 - Endeavor was delayed because of wiring and computer failures;

· August 2000 - inspection of Columbia revealed 3,500 defects in wiring;

· October 2000 - the 100th flight of the shuttle was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and concerns with the external tank;

· April 2002 - a hydrogen leak forced the cancellation of the Atlantis flight;

· July 2002 - the inspector general reported that the shuttle safety programme was not properly managed;

· August 2002 - the shuttle launch system was grounded after fuel line cracks were discovered.

White House officials rejected Nelson's plea for a moratorium. He tried to talk again to Nasa's administration about his worries in October but was again rebuffed.

Yesterday Nelson told The Observer that he feared the Columbia disaster was the culmination of 'disastrous mismanagement' by Nasa's most senior officials and would inevitably lead to the moratorium he was calling for.

'I became concerned about safety issues in Nasa after Challenger. I think what happened is that very slowly over the years Nasa's culture of safety became eroded.

'But when I tried to raise my concerns with Nasa's new administrator, I received two reprimands for not going through the proper channels, which discouraged other people from coming forward with their concerns. When it came to an argument between a middle-ranking engineer and the astronauts and administration, guess who won.

'One of my biggest complaints has been that we should have been looking for ways to develop crew escape modules, which Nasa has constantly rejected.'

His claims emerged against a background of growing concern over the management of safety issues by Nasa.

They followed similar warnings last April by the former chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, Richard Bloomberg, who said: 'In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as now.'

Bloomberg blamed the deferral or elimination of planned safety upgrades, a diminished workforce as a result of hiring freezes, and an ageing infrastructure for the advisory panel's findings.

His warning echoed earlier concern about key shuttle safety issues. In September 2001 at a Senate hearing into shuttle safety, senators and independent experts warned that budget and management problems were putting astronauts lives at risk. At the centre of concern were claims that a budget overspend of almost $5 billion (£3bn) had led to a culture in Nasa whereby senior managers treated shuttle safety upgrades as optional.

Among those who spoke out were Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who warned: 'I fear that if we don't provide the space shuttle programme with the resources it needs for safety upgrades, our country is going to pay a price we can't bear.

'We're starving Nasa's shuttle budget and thus greatly increasing the chance of a catastrophic loss.'

Although Nasa officials said that improvements were being made they admitted that more needed to be done.

A year earlier, a General Accounting Office report had warned that the loss of experienced engineers and technicians in the space shuttle programme was threatening the safety of future missions just as Nasa was preparing to increase its annual number of launches to build the International Space Station.

The GAO cited internal Nasa documents showing 'workforce reductions are jeopardising Nasa's ability to safely support the shuttle's planned flight rate'.

Space agency officials discovered in late 1999 that many employees didn't have the necessary skills to properly manage avionics, mechanical engineering and computer systems, according to the GAO report.

The GAO assembled a composite portrait of the shuttle programme's workforce that showed twice as many workers over 60 years of age than under 30. It assessed that the number of workers then nearing retirement could jeopardise the programme's ability to transfer leadership roles to the next generation to support the higher flight rate necessary to build the space station

Peter Beaumont
Sunday February 2, 2003
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4596876,00.html

evereno

02-02-03, 05:59 PM

Iraqis Call Shuttle Disaster God's Vengeance

Sat February 01, 2003 03:24 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Immediate popular reaction in Baghdad on Saturday to the loss of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew -- including the first Israeli in space -- was that it was God's retribution.
"We are happy that it broke up," government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.

"God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said.

Iraqis are braced for a possible U.S.-led war to rid their country of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons it may possess. Iraq denies it has such weapons.

Car mechanic Mohammed Jaber al-Tamini noted Israeli air force Colonel Ilan Ramon was among the dead when the shuttle broke up over the southwestern United States 16 minutes before its scheduled landing.

The 48-year-old Israeli astronaut was a fighter pilot in the Israeli air force. He was the youngest pilot in a team that bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. Israel said the reactor was intended to develop nuclear weapons.

"Israel launched an aggression on us when it raided our nuclear reactor without any reason, now time has come and God has retaliated to their aggression," Tamini said.

There were no such signs of jubilation over the shuttle disaster in any of the Palestinian territories. The official response from the Palestinians was one of condolence.

"President (Yasser) Arafat and the Palestinian Authority offer their condolences to the six American families and the Israeli family who lost their loved ones in the catastrophe," Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and spokesman, told Reuters.

Erekat said Arafat had sent President Bush a message of condolences over the loss of the NASA space agency's shuttle. The United States, Israel's closest ally, is the chief Middle East peace broker.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=BJKKZDZVFUFBACRBAELCF EY?type=worldNews&storyID=2152926

Jnr

02-03-03, 03:40 AM

I think it's a tremendous tragedy.:cry: Those poor famillies of those that died.

Laurie

02-03-03, 07:49 AM

Those fuckers are going to be our next "disaster." I'm gonna be estatic when we break THOSE MF's up. :fbomb:

Eagle3

02-03-03, 08:35 AM

I heard the same shit Pete and you're right about it being bullshit. I heard one director on Meet The Press constantly spouting the party line that everything was done that could be done and didn't even acknowledge the Space Station as possiblity. Well, no, not everything was done. They admitted they didn't even take pictures from ground and satellite resources as they've done in the past to check for damage. I would hope that they have better plans than, "well, they have to come back that way anyways". Horseshit! I don't buy it and I hope those bureaucratic assbags lose thier jobs over this. Man, I was so steamed listening to these guys. Usually I'm pissed at the reporters. I was surprised I didn't hear the normal load of idiotic questions from the peanut gallery.

Originally posted by Pistol Pete
I just read a line from a NASA official that said there was nothing the astronauts could do in orbit to remedy the problem.
The Space Station is a docking station, or, garage. If NASA had told them about the hit to the wing, they could have docked and investigated. Upon finding missing and damaged tiles, a second shuttle could have brought the parts and epoxy needed to make the repairs.
To say there was nothing that could be done is bullshit! The Apollo 13 guys had extensive damage and managed to make the repairs to return to Earth and they only had what was on board.

JBMoney

02-03-03, 09:21 PM

I have some conflicting views on this that may not make me a popular person, but here it goes anyway and hopefully I will be able to put this in terms that are understandable.

I have no intent of showing disrespect toward anyone involved with the space program, especially the brave folks who died as a result of the accident.

As with many of today's tragedies, everybody is obviously in a big rush to blame somebody for this. Nothing of significance can happen in America without someone being blamed, there's no such thing as an unavoidable accident. "Shit doesn't happen" after all apparently. Regardless of that convenient cliche, let me look at a couple things, not all of them related to this article...

#1) Everything in this article may be 100% true, or it may not be. It's written by a reporter. In my experience reporters ultimately write stories based on what they think some people want to hear, not necessarily ALL THE FACTS. I apply this logic to most stories I read. I used to be a press secretary and know how things can often turn out on the other end.

#2) While Nelson is clearly qualified, certainly there were other voices equally qualified who disagreed with his analysis. People disagree. Was he purposely ignored, making this a conspiracy to endanger Astronauts? I highly doubt it.

As everyone says, NASA is a close family. Nobody wants to see their family members die. Journalist Charles Wiley used to say it's not a conspiracy unless there's a defector. Is Nelson a defector? The ONLY defector out of a close family of hundreds of people responsible for making the shuttle safe? Again, I doubt it.

As fate would have it, Nelson was unfortunately right.

#2) As for the list of repairs presented here, I could just as easily make the case that they are an indication of how conscientious and safe (sic?) the program is. If there weren't any repairs we could just as easily assume that maintenance was completely neglected.

#3) I've heard a lot of folks say that NASA is trying to do a $20 billion job on a $15 billion budget. Short of the argument that they should roboticize everything, does that mean NASA should stop trying to achieve manned space flight with the tools they have because of the increased danger? If the Astronauts who died were asked this beforehand, would they say stop, or go for it? Wait 15 years so we can get a brand new spacecraft or go for it? I think they're choice would have been obvious. They weren't dummies, they were all highly educated in this field and knew the risks and *probably* NASA's weaknesses.

#4) We knew going into this that a tragic accident was PREDICTED for one out of ever 75 flights. We've had two in I think around 115. I don't think you can say that the one in 75 estimate is innacurate based on this. One in 75 doesn't mean that the accident is going to happen on missions #75 and #150. What if the Astronauts, who knew this estimate were instead told that there would be one accident for every 57.5 missions. Would they still go? Yes.

#5) Was there mismanagement and beauracracy at NASA? I'm sure there was, it's a gov't organization after all. Is that why there was an accident? Maybe, but a blanket statement like that can't *constructively* assign blame to a system that is unavoidable in any large organization?

#6) Was it because "someone" didn't find a way to physically examine the ship after they had determined the foam incident was not an issue. Possibly, but I'll wait for some more info. It was not a determination made by one guy looking at a VCR tape and saying, "ah that's no big deal" and moving on. It took days and many people to reach that conclusion. Were they wrong? I don't know that we know that for sure yet. If yes, are they all to blame?

Anyhow, in conclusion, I guess I'm just not convinced yet that someone needs to be blamed. I think our culture is a little to prone to having to point the finger somewhere. I think I'll wait for more info before passing judgement.

These are dangerous flights. Everyone knows it. God Bless the brave folks who choose Astronaut as a profession for taking the risks to advance our species.

Will people appear to be defend themselves from being blamed for this, even if it wasn't their fault? Of course.

Is it likely that we'll discover things we can do to prevent this from happening again? Probably.

Will EVERYBODY involved be a little more conscientious because of this? Probably.

Does that mean we'll never have another tragic manned flight accident? No.

Freak

02-03-03, 09:52 PM

Wow.

Believe me, I am not trying to be an ass kisser, but I agree 100% with what JB$ said.

I look at this in the same way as I look at the nuclear industry, in which I have been a part of for 10 years or so now. It is really similar, when something happens, they always try to blame someone. I'm not talking about only big events either. It's evrything. It's the nature of the industry. I was going to make very similar comments to what JB said, but he said it all.

Well said.

cuda

02-03-03, 10:13 PM

*Hands Freak sum toilet paper.* You have a little doodie on yer chin there...:rolleyes:

Laurie

02-03-03, 11:31 PM

I completely agree (and yeah, I'm ass-kissin ;)) But seriously, I completely agree about the media. They'll do and say anything to make waves, even if it's a pond. Who cares about the facts? Let's just give them hype on top of hype.

evereno

02-03-03, 11:45 PM

While JB's analysis and conclusions does make one think and while I do agree that until all the facts are in we should not play the blame game; Don Nelson's (Thank god we are not talking about the Dallas Mavaricks' Coach) findings does also make one think.

I am very confident that no one in NASA ever contemplated the shuttle breaking up, nor is anyone left without sorrow and loss within NASA and across the nation. Nevertheless, there will be many questions that politicians and opportunist are going to cry for and Nelson's comments will definitely be apart of their search for answers, or more precise "blame".

Further, as already noted by JB, with Bush in office we can expect a full blown liberal media blitz to attribute blame to the president.

We have already seen the democrats attack Bush on this issue. First, regarding the letter and now regarding his budget.

Stay tuned, this is just beginning.

Eagle3

02-04-03, 11:11 AM

Quicktime video: Space shuttle Columbia begins to break up; filmed Saturday morning from Sparks (http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2003/02/01/33451.php)

WHAT'S ON THE VIDEO:

An amateur astronomer who watched the space shuttle cross the sky outside his Sparks home early Saturday picked up on videotape what might be signs of trouble for the doomed flight.

On the video, the shuttle approaches from the right toward the image of the planet Venus, shining in the background center-screen. A flare arises from the shuttle, and the craft starts to leave a trail behind it, just before it passes in front of Venus.

Jay Lawson, a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno, said he saw something unexpected while watching his tape.

Eagle3

02-07-03, 12:44 PM

NASA Reviewing Images Of Jagged Area on Wing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38794-2003Feb7.html) (By Kathy Sawyer, Washington Post, 02-07-03) - High-resolution images taken by an Air Force camera show a jagged area on the leading edge of Columbia's left wing 60 seconds before the space shuttle broke apart over Texas last Saturday, Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine reported in its edition published today.

The images, reportedly taken from a ground-based camera in the Southwest whose precise location was not disclosed, are among those being analyzed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A source close to the investigation told the trade weekly that they show serious structural damage to the left wing near the point where it joins the fuselage.

Damage to the wing would be consistent with telemetry data received by NASA mission control that showed increasing drag on that side of the shuttle and efforts by the computerized flight control to counteract it.

The damage seen in the photographs is in about the same area where a piece of insulating foam appeared to strike the leading edge of the wing after breaking off the shuttle's main tank at liftoff, but there was no indication last night that the impact caused the damage.

The magazine, widely respected in the industry, said the damage to the wing's leading edge would have affected the shuttle's flying characteristics and allowed superheated gases to flow into the wing structure -- what it called "a fatal combination."

NASA spokesman James Hartsfield in Houston said last night that he could not confirm the account. He said investigators at the space center are poring over many still images and videos taken of the descending spacecraft in its final minutes, but as of late yesterday, no such wing damage had been mentioned in staff briefings.

The magazine said the images also show the thrusters on the orbiter's right rear side firing to correct the spaceship's yaw, or left-right orientation, as the onboard computer tried to correct the shuttle's increasingly disrupted flight posture.

NASA engineers have speculated about whether damaged thermal tiles, a fundamental structural flaw, a malfunctioning onboard computer or a meteoroid strike might have been the root cause of the shuttle's breakup during its plunge into Earth's atmosphere. The telemetry showed that the end result was something that caused excess "drag" and disrupted the aerodynamics of the spacecraft as it hurtled through the thickening air, decelerating from orbital velocities of around 17,500 mph to 12,500 mph in its final moments.

Drag is unimportant in space, where a shuttle is in its element, but as soon as an orbiter hits the atmosphere it becomes an unpowered glider. Anything that throws it out of aerodynamic position is dangerous.

The leading edge of the wing, the site of the jagged shape in the images, is the point where the insulating material switches from thermal protection tiles, which are glued on, to a different system made of reinforced carbon-carbon material, which is bolted on.

This means the problem could have resulted either from failure of the tiles or of the attachment mechanisms, the magazine suggested.

The ragged edge on the left wing "indicates that either a small structural breach -- like a crack -- occurred, allowing 2,500 F. reentry heating to erode away additional structure there, or that a small portion of the leading edge fell off at that location," the magazine reported.

The front of the shuttle wing is flat and is fitted with a U-shaped reinforced carbon-carbon structure that gives it aerodynamic shape and provides a crucial shield against the heat of reentry. The structures are bolted on.

Eagle3

02-10-03, 06:45 AM

NASA Probes Whether Shuttle Struck by Space Debris (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49038-2003Feb9.html)

Reuters
Sunday, February 9, 2003; 8:23 PM

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - NASA engineers were looking on Sunday into the possibility that something struck or fell away from shuttle Columbia in space a day after its launch on a mission that ended tragically when the returning spacecraft fell apart, killing its seven astronauts.

Radar images from the military agency that tracks space objects showed something moving slowly away from the orbiting Columbia on Jan. 17 in a possible clue to what caused the worst U.S. space disaster since Challenger exploded in 1986.

It could be any number of things, including debris, a small meteor, a piece of the shuttle or simply ice formed by a routine shuttle wastewater dump, NASA officials said.

"The short answer is that we don't know what it is, but we are looking at it very closely," said NASA spokesman John Ira Petty at the Johnson Space Center.

NASA engineers were examining data to see if the shuttle shook at the same time the object was spotted, indicating a possible impact, officials said.

The image was detected by the North American Aerospace Defense Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, which keeps an eye on orbiting satellites and space debris and routinely warns shuttles when they are on a collision course with space objects.

It was the latest possible clue NASA was evaluating in a fast-moving investigation into the disintegration of the agency's oldest shuttle.

The spacecraft launched on Jan. 16 on a 16-day science mission and fell to earth in thousands of pieces after breaking up high over Texas just 16 minutes from landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 1.

Tracking cameras showed a piece of foam insulation from the spacecraft's external fuel tank striking Columbia's left wing 80 seconds after takeoff from Kennedy Space Center.

NASA UNDECIDED ABOUT FOAM DAMAGE

NASA is undecided about whether the foam could have done enough damage to the shuttle's heat-shielding tiles to cause the orbiter's breakup under the intense heat of re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

A grainy Air Force photograph appeared to show a jagged edge in the left wing, but NASA officials said it was not clear enough to give a definitive answer.

In the spacecraft's final moments, sensors showed rising heat on the its left side and a struggle by its computerized flight system to maintain control as drag increased on the left wing.

Searchers in Texas and Louisiana have recovered thousands of shuttle parts, including a two-foot section of a wing found near Fort Worth, Texas.

Petty said it had not yet been determined if it came from the right or left wing. It could yield important clues if it is the left wing, NASA officials said.

A search for possible Shuttle parts extended all the way to California, they said.

Recovered pieces of Columbia have been stored at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, but would be moved to Kennedy starting mid-week, NASA said.

Laurie

02-10-03, 08:04 AM

Officials Wonder if Ice Formed on Shuttle

By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030209/ap_on_sc/shuttle_investigation_176

SPACE CENTER, Houston - Investigators are searching for evidence that a block of ice big enough to damage Columbia's wing may have formed on a waste water vent, a problem that plagued an earlier shuttle flight.

They also are looking closely at what may be two key pieces of Columbia debris — a 2-foot piece of one wing, including an attached chunk of thermal tiles, and a 300-pound cover of a landing gear compartment, possibly the site of a sudden temperature rise moments before the shuttle broke apart.

One day after Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, military radar detected an object moving rapidly away from the shuttle. NASA (news - web sites) said it is unknown what the object was, but the possibility that it could have been ice from a waste water vent sent investigators back to a detailed search for evidence that the shuttle may have formed ice throughout its mission.

Adm. Hal Gehman, head of a board investigating the Columbia accident, said Sunday that the object detected near the shuttle could have come from the spacecraft itself and could be ice.

He said the U.S. Space Command of the Air Force, which monitors objects in space, is providing data on the object to the investigators.

"These reports are emerging now right now," Gehman said. "It's too early to say if they mean anything."

The waste water vent, which is under the shuttle cabin, in front of the left wing, is used to expel into space both urine and surplus water generated from the shuttle's fuel cell power system.

Usually the water shoots out into the cold vacuum of space as a spray of crystals, but on at least one shuttle mission, in 1984, the water formed a basketball-sized chunk of ice on the lip of the vent. At the time, NASA engineers were so concerned the ice could damage the shuttle wing during re-entry that they ordered the astronauts aboard Discovery to use the shuttle's robot arm to break off the ice ball.

That heavy robot arm, which wasn't necessary for Columbia's 16-day science mission, was left off so more experiments could added, and the waste water vent could not be seen from the cabin by the seven astronauts. NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said it's possible ice could have formed and not been detected, even though heaters were installed on the waste water dump valve after the 1984 mission.

When Columbia fired its rockets to drop out of orbit, it could have sent any accumulated ice slamming into the wing where other data suggests there was severe damage to the thermal protection tiles. The theory is unproven and is only one of a number of scenarios being probed by engineers.

Although Gehman and the other members of the Columbia investigation board were appointed by NASA, Gehman said their charter gives them the authority to conduct testing in laboratories not affiliated with the space agency.

He said Sunday that the board will split up into three teams and each will gather data at different NASA centers. This will speed up the investigation, Gehman said. The board has 60 days to complete its investigation. Some critics said the board needs more time, noting that the commission that investigated the 1986 Challenger accident required 120 days to complete its investigation.

NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said Sunday that no theory has been excluded.

"Nothing is off the table," he said on CNN. "We're going to let the Columbia accident board guide us in terms of their findings about what caused this accident."

More than 12,000 pieces of debris have been located in Texas and Louisiana, including what appears to be a hatch door with a hydraulic opening and closing mechanism that was found Sunday. O'Keefe said the debris will be transported to Kennedy Space Center (news - web sites) starting this week where investigators will attempt to reassemble as much of it as possible, though it won't be easy.

"There is certainly no way we are going be able to reconstruct it. The pieces are just absolutely mangled," O'Keefe said. "It's an awful lot of tangled stuff."

The wing segment and landing gear compartment door found in Texas have captured the attention of engineers because they could have been near areas where the shuttle registered a rapid temperature rise during the last minutes of flight Feb. 1.

Gehman declined to say Sunday if the wing was from the left or right side and said he didn't know which side the landing gear door came from.

Mission Control received data from Columbia that showed a sudden rise in temperature in the left landing gear compartment and along the left side of the fuselage. The data also shows that there was increasing wind resistance from the left wing, forcing the autopilot to rapidly move control surfaces and fire jets to maintain stability. The craft seemed to be losing the control battle, engineers said, just before all communications with Columbia stopped.

NASA's shuttle missions are on hold now, but O'Keefe said Sunday that the agency is still preparing to resume flights as soon as the cause of Columbia's breakup is determined and any shuttle flaws are fixed. "We've still got folks aboard the international space station," he said.

Eagle3

02-12-03, 09:56 AM

Text: Excerpts From NASA's Final Communications With the Columbia (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/national/12STEX.html?ex=1045717200&en=7e9b1a81847d8a57&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE)

Following are excerpts from NASA communications with the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, beginning at 8:31 a.m., as recorded by The New York Times. NASA assisted in clarifying parts and identifying the speakers, who included Jeff Kling, the shuttle's maintenance, mechanical arm and crew systems officer, or MMACS; Leroy Cain, the flight director; Bill Foster, the ground controller; Charlie Hobaugh, the capsule communicator; Col. Rick D. Husband, the flight commander; Mike Sarafin, the guidance, navigation and control officer, or GNC; Laura Hoppe, instrumentation and communications officer, or INCO; Katie Rogers, emergency, environmental and consumables operation manager, or EECOM; and Richard Jones, flight dynamics officer, or FDO.

KLING F.Y.I., I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle, hydraulic return temperatures. Two of them on system one and one in each of systems two and three.
CAIN Four hyd return temps?
KLING To the left outboard and left elevon.
CAIN O.K. Is there anything common to them? D.S.P. [digital signal processor] or M.D.M. [multiplexer-de-multiplexer, like the former an electronic processor that handles date], or anything? I mean, you're telling me you lost them all at exactly the same time.
KLING No, not exactly. They were within probably four or five seconds of each other.

CAIN O.K, where are those — where is that instrumentation located?
KLING All four of them are located in the aft part of the left wing, right in front of the elevons, elevon actuators. And there is no commonality.
CAIN No commonality. [long pause] MMACS, tell me again which systems they're for.
KLING That's all three hydraulic systems. It's — two of them are to the left outboard elevon and two of them to the left outboard.
CAIN O.K. I got you. Flight guidance, we're processing drag with good residual.
FEMALE VOICE Copy.
CAIN Thank you.
FOSTER Flight, [this is] G.C.

CAIN Go.
FOSTER Ground enabled for the landing count.
CAIN Thank you.

CAIN G.N.C. [guidance, navigation and control officer Mike Sarafin], flight.
SARAFIN Flight, G.N.C.
CAIN Everything look good to you, control, and right and everything is nominal, right?
SARAFIN Control's been stable through the rolls that we've done so far flying. We have good trims. I don't see anything out of the ordinary.
CAIN O.K. Come back, flight.
KLING Flight, MMACS
CAIN All indications for your hydraulic system indications are good.
KLING They're all good. We've had good quantities all the way across.
CAIN And the other temps are normal?
MALE VOICE The other temps are normal, yes, sir.
CAIN And when you say you lost these, are you saying that they went ——
MALE VOICE 3 All four of them are offscale low.
CAIN or — offscale low.
MALE VOICE 3 And they were all staggered. They were, like I said, within several seconds of each other.
CAIN O.K.

MALE VOICE 1 Flight.
MALE VOICE 2 Oh, we have the balloon. It is being run through D.D.S. [descent design system — balloons that take atmospheric readings] right now.

KLING Flight, MMACS
CAIN Go.
KLING We just lost tire pressure on left outboard and left inboard, both tires.
HOBAUGH And Columbia, Houston. We see your tire pressure messages ——
MALE VOICE 3 — and we did not copy your last —
MALE VOICE 2 Is your instrumentation, MMACS .
MALE VOICE 1 Our flight, MMACS, tires are also off.
HUSBAND Roger, uh —— [last voice communication from Columbia].
HOPPE INCO
CAIN Go.
HOPPE Just checking a few hits here. We're right up on top of the tail. [The shuttle's tail was between its broadcast antenna and a relay satellite, disputing communications.]

CAIN And there's no commonality between all these tire pressure instrumentations and the hydraulic return instrumentations.
KLING No, sir, there's not. We've also lost the nose gear down talk back and the right main gear talk back [a device that broadcasts information on whether the landing gear is up or down].
CAIN Nose gear and right main gear down talk backs?
KLINGYes, sir.
ROGERS EECOM, [emergency, environmental and consumables operation manager] CAIN EECOM

ROGERSI've got four temperature sensors on the bottom-line data that are offscale low.
HOPPE Flight, INCO. I didn't expect this kind of a hit on comm.
FLIGHT CONTROLLER Do you see how far away from U.H.F. that two minute clock did?
HOPPE Affirmative, flight.

G.N.C. Flight. G.N.C.
CAIN Go.
G.N.C. If we have any reason to suspect any sort of controllability issue, I would keep the control cards handy on page four-dash-13. [This refers to a procedure in a flight manual and indicates that ground controllers believe the shuttle has a serious problem.

FLIGHT CONTROL Copy.

CAIN INCO, we were rolled left last day we had and you were expecting a little bit of ratty comm, but not this long.
HOPPE That's correct, flight. Expect it to be a little bit intermittent. And this is pretty solid right here.
CAIN No onboard system config changes right before we lost data.
HOPPE That is correct, flight. All look good.
CAIN Still all on string two [a communications setup] and everything looked good.

HOPPE String two looking good.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, comm check.
MALE VOICE 1flight.
CAIN Go.
JONES Closing end point with the one-hour balloon shows us touching down at 1496, 1,500 feet down the runway. Our cross wind right now is on the left - from the left on the three-three end.

HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.

KLING Flight, MMACS.
FLIGHT CONTROL MMACS .
KLING On the tire pressures, we did see them go erratic for a little bit before they went away, so I do believe it's instrumentation.
FLIGHT CONTROL O.K.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.

MALE VOICE 1 Flight, final?.
MALE VOICE 2 Go.
MALE VOICE 1 I know this data's a little late. The one-hour balloon for Texas for winds for -
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.
MALE VOICE 1 I think we're in a smaller wind persistence case than that. In other words, we shouldn't expect as big of a change. I'm comfortable with 1,500 feet down the runway.
GROUND CONTROL Flight, G.C.
FLIGHT CONTROL Go.
FLIGHT CONTROL MILARS (Merritt Island Tracking Station) not reporting any R.F. [radio frequency transmission from shuttle] at this time.

CAIN FDO, when are you expecting tracking?

JONES One minute ago, flight.

HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.

MALE VOICE 1 no . . . yet.

MALE VOICE 2 Copy.

HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.

HOPPE Flight, INCO

CAIN Go.

HOPPE Could I could swap strings in the blind?

CAIN O.K. over.

HOPPE Flight, INCO. String one in the blind.

CAIN INCO

HOPPE I've commanded string one in the blind flight.

CAIN Copy.

FOSTER MILAR'S taking one of their antennaes off into a search mode.

CAIN Copy.

MALE VOICE 3 Final flight.

MALE VOICE 4 Go ahead flight.

CAIN Have we gotten any tracking data?

FOSTER We got a blip of tracking data. It was a bad data point flight. We do not believe that was the orbiter. We are in a search pattern with our C bands at this time. We do not have any valid data at this time.

CAIN O.K. Any other trackers that we can go to?

FOSTER Let me start talking flight . . . navigator.

MALE VOICE 1 Fi ——. do you have any tracking?

MALE VOICE 2 No sir.

CAIN Go.

GROUND CONTROLLER: 2 My C bands have not acquired anything. We are only acquiring false locks at this time.

MALE VOICE 3 Copy Final.

CAIN O.K. All flight controllers on the flight loop we need to kick off the F.C.O.H. [flight control operations handbook] contingency plan procedure. F.C.O.H. checklist page 2.8 dash 5.

MALE VOICE 1 Final flight.

MALE VOICE 2 Go ahead. Do you have any information or reports from space command?

CAIN O.K., all flight controllers on page 9 of the F.C.O.H. procedure you need to make sure you step through the actions required in step 20. That's for your work station logs display printouts. There's a whole list of data collection items that we need to make sure we log through.

CAIN Folks, listen up again on the flight loop. No phone calls offsite outside of this room. Our discussions are on these loops on the recorded . . . loops only. No data, no phone calls, no transmissions anywhere into or out.

Laurie

02-12-03, 11:59 AM

Heard this on the radio on the way into work today.....heart wrenching, to say the least...

gopsdragon

02-12-03, 08:34 PM

Shuttle search teams make a grisly find

‘Significant amounts’ of human remains found at East Texas site

ASSOCIATED PRESS

HEMPHILL, Texas, Feb. 12 — Crews searching for space shuttle debris found “significant amounts” of human remains believed to be Columbia’s astronauts, an official said Wednesday.

SHERIFF TOMMY MADDOX said the remains were found in Sabine County, which is bordered by a reservoir that divers have been searching along the Louisiana line. A door and window were also found Tuesday.
“Lord have mercy on all the other things found,” Maddox said without elaborating.
Human remains found during the search have been taken to the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for identification. NASA said last week that partial remains from all seven astronauts had been found.
Dive teams using sonar equipment returned Wednesday to the 75-mile-long Toledo Bend Reservoir, where people had reported seeing large chunks of debris fall shortly after the Columbia broke apart high over Texas on Feb. 1.
Despite sunny weather, underwater visibility was less than 2 feet, said Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Dave Bary.
“It’s more a case of feel than see,” Bary said. “That takes time.”
On Wednesday, members of a new command team and search crews from the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were expected to arrive and eventually take over coordination of the search in five East Texas counties.
National Guard troops, locals and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers helping with the ground search will be phased out and relieved by new crews from around the country, Maddox said.
“Given that this is a national crisis, it deserves a nationally based response. I think it’s indicative that we’re in this for the long haul,” said Bob Miller, a spokesman for the National Park Service.
Officials from NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have overseen the search, but local law enforcement officials have helped coordinate the movement of individual teams of searchers.
The search in east Texas will probably take several more weeks, Miller said. In western Louisiana, the search is mostly over.

FRAGMENTS ARRIVE IN FLORIDA
Meanwhile, thousands of recovered Columbia fragments began arriving at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they will be spread out in a huge hangar and at least partially reconstructed by investigators trying to determine what went wrong.
Members of the board leading the investigation also arrived at the space center. They wanted to see the hangar as well as where shuttles are prepared for flight, launched and refurbished, said retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., the head of the board.

“A lot of people at NASA are telling us a lot of things; we need to see the things they’re talking about,” Gehman said. “This is an orientation visit.”
The first shipment of debris arrived from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., in two tractor-trailers shortly after 9 a.m. ET. The debris will be laid out in a 50,000-square-foot hangar on a grid marked by yellow and blue tape. The nine-member inquiry board will have offices in the same hangar, although the board is based in Houston.
Gehman said Tuesday at Johnson Space Center in Houston no debris has been recovered west of Fort Worth, Texas. But he added: “We have reason to believe that we should keep looking west of Fort Worth.”
Debris in west Texas could be especially significant because it could help explain how and when Columbia started breaking apart as it aimed for a Florida touchdown. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TIRES
Separately, NASA also said officials from Johnson Space Center had called experts at its Langley research facility in Hampton, Va., on Jan. 27 to ask what might happen if the shuttle’s tires were not inflated during a landing attempt.
NASA spokesman Keith Henry said the question was based on assumptions that damage to the shuttle’s thermal protection system would cause the tires to deflate. The Langley experts said such a failure could cause broad damage to the shuttle’s tires.
The evidence released so far suggests that Columbia’s troubles began in the left wing where a chunk of foam insulation struck shortly after liftoff Jan. 16. As the shuttle headed home 16 days later, temperatures in that area rose and sensors began failing in the final eight minutes of flight.
Part of the left wing has been found.
During the board’s first news conference in Houston on Tuesday, Gehman wouldn’t speculate on the cause of the shuttle’s demise. “We don’t have favorite theories. We’re pursuing everything,” he said.
He did say he was convinced the inquiry would determine the cause.
During its stay in Florida, the investigative board plans to visit the facility that manufactures thermal protection tiles for the shuttle.
The silica tiles are based on a material first developed by Lockheed chemist Robert Beasley and originally produced at Lockheed’s plant in Sunnyvale, Calif. From the earliest tests, some tiles fell off the orbiter.
Even so, production and installation became so refined the work was later done at Kennedy Space Center and elsewhere.

http://msnbc.com/news/867336.asp

Eagle3

02-19-03, 09:12 AM

Shuttle Report to Look at Big Picture (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27388-2003Feb18.html)
Panel Chairman Vows Debate About Future of Space Flight
By Lee Hockstader and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A04

HOUSTON, Feb. 18 -- The chairman of the independent board investigating the loss of the space shuttle Columbia today promised a final report that will go beyond the disaster's cause and frame the debate on the future of manned space flight itself.

Yet even as retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman, chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, laid out his bold vision, he acknowledged that only scant physical evidence of the fallen orbiter has been discovered so far in the dense, piney woods of east Texas and Louisiana, leaving investigators with few material clues.

"It is our goal as a board, that no matter what we find here, that the report we write will be deep enough and rich enough that it will be the foundation for a good intellectual debate about what we do next," he said.

While he suggested the board would stop short of a recommendation on whether to continue or end the space shuttle program, he said: "Our report will not be an individual random data point on a graph. Our report will place this event in context of our space exploration quest and attempt to put it in its rightful place."

In the investigation board's second formal news conference, a stark dichotomy emerged between the broad scope of the panel's ambitions and the paucity of evidence from the space shuttle itself, which investigators say is crucial.

Although 3,656 pieces of Columbia have arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and perhaps 10,000 more are en route, board members said they amount to no more than 5 percent -- and possibly as little as 1 or 2 percent -- of the total reentry weight of the 117-ton Columbia.

Moreover, no critical pieces of evidence, and no patterns, have emerged from the wreckage.

"Right now we have a tiny, tiny portion of the orbiter," said Maj. Gen. John Barry, who leads the investigation board's team focusing on materiel and management matters.

The biggest problem for investigators has been the wide swath of the southwestern corner of the nation that the shuttle traveled as it began to break apart.

Board member James Hallock, who heads the Transportation Department's aviation safety section, said the commission has been studying films of the shuttle's reentry, and "it does look like things were starting to come from the shuttle as it approached California."

Experts are now trying to extrapolate where the wreckage would have landed, but commission members said they expect it to be difficult to find. "We have the Grand Canyon area, all the areas of Southern California, mountainous areas -- it's going be to very difficult to find, but I sure would like to see it," Hallock said.

Board members again asked citizens to report any wreckage found, and stressed the importance of reassembling the pieces at Cape Canaveral.

"We still need debris," Gehman said. "Debris collection is extraordinarily important to us."

He said that about 2,600 pieces of the space shuttle had been identified, catalogued and laid out on the "reconstruction floor" of a hangar, and more than 1,000 more were being processed at the space center. Thousands more pieces are being collected, processed and transported, first to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where NASA has established a staging area, and then to the space center in Florida.

Meanwhile, Gehman and NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe took pains today to stress the investigation board's independence in an attempt to mollify congressional critics who have complained that the panel remains too close to the space agency.

Gehman said the commission is replacing its NASA start-up staff, including the commission's spokesman, with independently hired staff. The commission staff, now numbering about two dozen, is expected to triple in the coming weeks, he said.

Moreover, Gehman said the board would hold public hearings -- the first a week from Thursday -- in which experts "who are not associated with any U.S. government program" will be invited to present their "theories and hypotheses" about the causes that led to the loss of Columbia.

He also said the board is establishing a toll-free phone number and a Web site through which individuals can forward information to the board without going through NASA.

In Washington, O'Keefe announced the third set of revisions of the commission's charter in little more than a week. The changes have eliminated any reference to NASA overseeing or reviewing the commission's work, or setting a 60-day deadline for the investigators to complete their work.

O'Keefe also dropped a requirement that the panel submit its final report directly to him. Instead, the board may provide a final written report "at such time and in such manner as the Board deems appropriate." Upon its completion, the report will be immediately released to the public. The archives, which Gehman said may include about 10,000 documents, would also be available to the public.

The latest changes removed any suggestion that the board would have to use NASA support staff in such areas as public affairs or legal or security matters.

Eagle3

02-26-03, 06:56 PM

NASA board probes object next to shuttle (http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-shuttle26.html)
February 26, 2003

BY MARCIA DUNN

SPACE CENTER, Houston--The board investigating the Columbia tragedy said Tuesday it wants to know more about a mysterious object that almost certainly fell off the shuttle and was flying alongside the spacecraft during its second day in orbit.

Meanwhile, NASA said late Tuesday night that a videotape from inside Columbia's cockpit has been recovered from the wreckage and shows four of the astronauts just before their ship began experiencing trouble. Thirteen minutes of tape were preserved; the rest was burned. The tape ends four minutes after the shuttle's atmospheric entry, while the shuttle is still over the Pacific and flying normally. An official close to the investigation said there is nothing in the videotape that sheds any light on Columbia's impending doom and it shows the astronauts putting on their gloves and chatting normally. Neither the official nor a NASA spokeswoman knew where, when or how the tape was found, but it was thought to have been recovered in Texas sometime in the last week. The board knew about the videotape for the last several days but did not discuss it at its weekly news conference Tuesday afternoon, the official said, because it wanted to give NASA time to show it to the astronauts' families. NASA plans to release copies to the news media later this week.

The object orbiting near Columbia was never noticed during the flight. After the shuttle's destruction over Texas on Feb. 1, the Air Force Space Command began analyzing radar data that might shed light on the disaster and noticed the object. Initially, NASA said it suspected the object might be frozen waste water dumped overboard or an orbiting piece of space junk that the shuttle happened to encounter. But Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, a board member, discounted both possibilities Tuesday and said the object almost had to have come from the shuttle itself. ''You or I could invent a dozen scenarios,'' Deal said. ''It could have been something loose that separated, it could have been something inside the payload bay.'' It also could have been part of the left wing, where all the overheating and other troubles developed during re-entry. He described the object as about 1 foot by 1 foot, 4 inches in size and said it was flying in tandem with Columbia one day into the mission. It was within 50 feet of the shuttle and, within that first day, started separating farther and farther away until it burned up on re-entry three days later, he said.

AP

Eagle3

02-26-03, 06:56 PM

Flight-deck video found in Columbia wreckage (http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/25/sprj.colu.debris/)
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/TECH/space/02/25/sprj.colu.debris/story.orangestuff.jpg

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (CNN) -- A digital videotape that recorded about 14 minutes of space shuttle Columbia's return to Earth was found in the wreckage of the orbiter, NASA officials and investigators said Tuesday. The videotape, which was scorched and partially burned, was shot from the flight deck and shows the back of the crew's helmets and most of the flight deck, as well as the view out the window as plasma built up around the shuttle as it breached the atmosphere. The video stops about 15 minutes before Columbia broke up as it headed to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, killing the crew of seven. NASA officials and investigators with the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said no problems or anomalies were seen on the videotape. The tape included nine minutes shot before the "entry interface" and four minutes of re-entry, investigators said. The video will be released to the public after it is shown to family members of the crew, officials said. It is not believed to be of much value to the investigation, they said.
Unexplained orange flecks

NASA officials also said Tuesday that a piece of shuttle Columbia debris found in far West Texas came from the upper section of the left wing. Retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, said the piece was a fragment of a tile from the area near where the wing narrows to meet the fuselage.

Gehman said that though there are no answers yet to what caused the shuttle accident, things are starting to come together. "We're now beginning to see some interesting trends and evidence in the debris," he said. "Some things are beginning to emerge, [but] no answers." He refused to elaborate. The westernmost fragment was found about three miles north of Littlefield, Texas, which is 35 miles northwest of Lubbock and 40 miles from the New Mexico state line. The location is more than 200 miles west of any other identified piece of debris. Gehman showed images of another tile, recovered near Forth Worth, Texas, which bore signs of extreme heat damage, much more than would be expected from normal re-entry. "It should be smooth and slightly gray," Gehman said. The side that was on the exterior of the wing was dark gray or black, a sign of extreme heat damage, with orange flecks. The interior side, which was attached to the shuttle's wing frame, seems to have a gouge in it. Whether it became charred and deformed before or after the shuttle disintegrated remains unknown, he said.

Clues in final data

NASA's Scott Hubbard, who is also on the board, said investigators had gleaned information from the final two seconds of garbled data from Columbia, though it is too early to evaluate its significance. The transmission showed that the shuttle's auxiliary power units were operating but that the hydraulic lines had lost all pressure and fluid. Based on eyewitness reports and photographs, NASA investigators believe Columbia began shedding material well before it disintegrated in the sky over east-central Texas on February 1, about 12 minutes short of its scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

More than 8,000 pieces of debris have been recovered and sent to Kennedy Space Center, where they are being examined by investigators trying to find the cause of the accident. The rubble accounts for more than 10 percent of the shuttle by weight, but "only a small fraction of the left wing has been recovered," Gehman said. Investigators think the left wing played a crucial role in the shuttle's demise. Wing sensors indicated numerous engineering problems in the minutes before the orbiter broke apart.

-- CNN Miami bureau chief John Zarrella and CNN.com's Richard Stenger contributed to this report.

Eagle3

02-26-03, 06:57 PM

Repair kits for damaged shuttles mulled (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/25/sprj.colu.shuttle.repair.ap/)
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (AP) -- NASA wants to give astronauts on future flights a fighting chance if their space shuttles end up with damaged thermal tiles.

The Columbia crew of Columbia had no repair kit and no safe way of looking under the ship's left wing, which had been struck by insulating foam from the fuel tank shortly after liftoff.

NASA officials have said ever since Columbia disintegrated over Texas on February 1 that even if they had known about severe tile damage to the wing, there was nothing the seven astronauts could have done about it. The space agency is already taking a much harder look at ways for astronauts to inspect and repair damaged tiles in orbit.

A NASA spokesman said one thing that will be looked at very closely is whether the international space station's robot arm can provide a stable platform. Columbia didn't fly to the space station, which has a 58-foot robot arm. The shuttle also didn't have its own mechanical arm. It was removed to make room for the laboratory and other scientific payloads.

The spokesman said no matter what the board finds is the cause of the accident, the shuttle program also plans to eliminate foam from the so-called bipod area of the external fuel tank as a source of launch debris.

Eagle3

02-27-03, 08:17 AM

Engineers' e-mail shows grave doubts on shuttle's survival (http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5274343.htm)
FEARS PROVE EERILY PROPHETIC
By Seth Borenstein and Curtis Morgan
Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The day before Columbia disintegrated in a fireball, NASA and contractor engineers exchanged a flurry of e-mail raising the possibility that the shuttle had been mortally damaged on liftoff and that they could lose the seven-member crew and shuttle during landing.

Senior NASA engineers worried that the space shuttle's left wing might burn off and cause the deaths of the crew, describing a scenario remarkably like the one investigators believe happened. But the haunting exchange never got to mission managers.

The e-mail described a far broader, internal debate about the seriousness of potential damage to Columbia from a liftoff collision with foam debris than previously acknowledged.

Some NASA engineers were so concerned that they asked the Department of Defense to redirect a satellite to get a view of the damaged tiles. But another official then told the Pentagon not to bother. One engineer was concerned enough that he discussed the possibility of the crew having to bail out during re-entry, or the shuttle being forced into a belly landing without landing gear.

One message appeared to show frustration with the lack of attention being paid to the possible danger: ``Are people just relegated to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best?'' wrote Robert Daugherty, a veteran NASA landing-gear expert who started a chain of 32 e-mail messages.

``Why are we talking about this on the day before landing and not the day after launch?'' wrote William C. Anderson, an employee for the United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor, less than 24 hours before the shuttle broke apart Feb. 1.

NASA, which released 30 pages of e-mail traffic Wednesday on its Web site (www.nasa.gov/columbia/foia/index.html; go to ``E-mail: Possible Issues Regarding Landing'') characterized the messages as routine ``what-if scenarios'' that were not dire warnings.

The issue began when insulating foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank hit the fragile tiles during the Jan. 16 launch. Boeing, a major shuttle contractor, studied the problem during flight and said it would not be a safety issue, and NASA mission managers agreed. However, the e-mail concerns still kept coming.

The messages ``were not warnings,'' NASA representative Allard Beutel said. ``These engineers are trained . . . not only trained but encouraged . . . to do this.''

Daugherty has told NASA public-affairs officials that his messages are being misinterpreted as warnings when they were not, an agency official said. Daugherty has declined to comment.

``The flight controllers who were involved'' in the decision ``were all in complete'' agreement ``with the results of the tile-impact analysis,'' NASA representative Eileen Hawley said. ``They decided there were no concerns.''

One engineer's e-mail, sent just 18 hours before Columbia's demise, sketched out what would happen ``if a limited stream of hot plasma did get into the well,'' just as the independent investigating board now thinks is likely. That message then detailed the possible sensor losses and valve problems, similar to what NASA has determined actually happened to Columbia.

The concerns prompted a request six days into the mission, on Jan. 22, for the U.S. Strategic Command to take satellite images of suspected damage to the shuttle's left wing. For weeks until Wednesday, NASA has denied it ever made such a request.

The space agency withdrew its informal request one day later, amid fears it might have ``cried wolf'' and endangered future such requests, according to one e-mail message.

Deciding against the satellite request, a space official wrote reassuringly to the Defense Department that Columbia was ``in excellent shape'' and that insulating foam that struck the shuttle on its mid-January liftoff was ``not considered to be a major problem.''

Hawley said there had been an ``unofficial'' request to the Department of Defense for satellite photos of the damaged area, but mission managers dropped the idea after the Boeing analysis predicted no risk of losing the craft from the foam hit.

Eagle3

03-03-03, 09:17 AM

Analysis hints at shuttle's last seconds (http://www.msnbc.com/news/875772.asp)
By James Oberg

Feb. 24 — New analysis of the garbled last 32 seconds of radio signals from the space shuttle Columbia has raised the possibility that the crew survived up to a minute after the spaceship began tumbling out of control and breaking up. This reconstruction of the tragic end of the mission on Feb. 1 contrasts sharply with most preliminary assessments that the craft disintegrated suddenly and totally.

IN THIS VIEW, the shuttle lost its struggle to keep its nose pointed ahead, and began a flat spin to the left. The airstream, though ferocious, was not powerful enough to tear the vehicle apart immediately. The analysis indicates that Columbia could have turned through at least one full tumble in about 20 seconds while the cabin remained intact and pressurized. Following the breakup of the vehicle, the cabin fell for tens of seconds before it was crushed by the heat and deceleration.
For now, this scenario is only an analysis based on the assembly of still-incomplete pieces of the Columbia puzzle. The scenario has not been confirmed by senior officials at NASA or by members of the board investigating the Columbia tragedy. But it is shared by a growing number of space experts, inside and outside NASA, who have discussed their views on condition of anonymity.
The image that emerges is of the shuttle turning end over end at least once before the fuselage breaks apart. During the tumble, large pieces of the wings, tail and engine nozzles would have been torn off. But the crew cabin would survive for additional tens of seconds until crushing deceleration finally tore it apart.

DECIPHERING THE DATA
The most persuasive evidence for this scenario comes from the 32 seconds of corrupted data that followed the last readable telemetry and voice signals from the shuttle. The signals were unreadable in real time because of massive “data dropouts” — and thus they did not appear on Mission Control’s flight control screens. But the bitstream was recorded at a ground station in White Sands, N.M., and it has slowly been yielding its secrets to mathematical analysis.
At the point when Mission Control’s readable data stopped, Columbia was approaching the Dallas area at an altitude of 206,000 feet and a speed of 12,500 mph. With its nose pitched up by 40 degrees, the shuttle was in a steep left bank as part of a series of “S-turn” maneuvers, aimed at bleeding off orbital energy and slowing down for its planned landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Although the shuttle was going Mach 16, the air was so thin that the effective “dynamic pressure” on its structure was the equivalent of a sea-level wind speed of 170 mph, or a Force 5 hurricane. If a space shuttle were sitting on the Florida runway in such a storm, major damage would be expected — but not instantaneous disintegration.
The re-entry heating reached as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but this was in the shock wave of squeezed air that was piling up a few feet in front of the vehicle. This high temperature was not caused by friction of the air moving across the shuttle’s skin itself — behind the “shock front,” the air moved across the skin at only a few hundred miles per hour. This hot air conveyed the tremendous heat of the re-entry shock wave into the shuttle’s protective tiles. If those tiles were damaged, as investigators suspect, the heat would have entered directly into the shuttle’s metal structure.
According to several sources, the deciphered data show that for several seconds after Houston Mission Control saw a loss of signal, the flight continued much as it had up to that point, except that additional steering rockets in the shuttle’s tail had turned on. This was apparently the autopilot’s attempt to counter growing drag on the left wing, which was pulling the shuttle’s nose to the left.
The origin of that drag remains unexplained, although most analysts agree it was almost certainly the result of damage to the wing, perhaps caused by debris that broke off the shuttle’s external fuel tank shortly after liftoff 16 days earlier.

SILENCE, THEN A FINAL BURST
After a few seconds of garbled data, the communication pathway — leading from the shuttle to a satellite in space and then down to the White Sands ground station — apparently went totally dead for about 20 seconds. Not even a garbled carrier signal came through.
But then, a burst of three or four seconds of corrupted data was received, followed by unbroken silence.
Some space engineers have interpreted this sequence as evidence that the shuttle, succumbing to the growing leftward torque, had turned away from pointing its antenna toward the relay satellite. The later burst of data could have resulted from the antenna momentarily turning again to face the satellite. The engineers surmised that a computer program designed to select different antennas could not cope with the fast turning.
Data from those final few seconds show a spaceship that was mortally wounded, but still working. Power was still being generated by the fuel cells under the payload bay, and signals were being received all the way from the back end of the craft.
Although the crew cabin was still pressurized and the four primary control computers were still functioning, other systems were in terminal distress. The three redundant hydraulic pressure generators — needed to control the shuttle’s aerosurfaces — were still functioning. But hydraulic pressure on the left side of the shuttle was zero in all three lines. The thruster system in the tail was reporting massive leakage of propellant.
These failures would have filled the cabin with the noise of alarms. Indicator lights would have been ablaze. The crew on the flight deck would have responded to these alarms in accordance with their training, if they were able. Those seated on the middeck would have prepared for emergency bailout once they got low enough in the atmosphere.
Based on the still-fragmentary readings, some engineers believe the shuttle was in a flat left spin. Others have suggested that the left wing was totally torn off, or was bent up against the side, causing the vehicle to roll left. In either scenario, the vehicle would have turned its back end into the wind. Parts of the tail (including, apparently, the drag chute package) would have torn off first, along with the bell-shaped rocket nozzles for the main engines and the orbital maneuvering engines. Damage there would explain the propellant leak alarms, which would have been followed by fiery detonation of the mixing chemicals.
Interpretation of the videotapes of the disintegration over Dallas remains unclear. Some smaller pieces are seen coming off a main body, followed by flashes of light that could indicate the detonation of propellant in the leaking tanks. A much larger scatter of large and small objects then can be seen. Heavier objects — three in particular, possibly the main engine blocks — forge ahead. Lighter tumbling objects, likely wing segments, slow and fall more quickly.

THE CREW’S FATE
The path of the crew cabin can only be guessed, once it tore loose from the rest of the fuselage and electrical power ceased. Buffeted and braked by air drag, it would have been heated by the surrounding shock-induced plasma. Falling deeper into the atmosphere, G-forces would have built up to the point that the heat-weakened aluminum frame collapsed in on itself. Some pieces broke loose and were carried away by the aerodynamic forces.
A more precise analysis depends on the scatter of impact points of the cabin and its contents — information that is still being analyzed by the accident team.
This analysis follows in the footseteps of the investigation into the 1986 Challenger tragedy. In Challenger’s case, the initial impressions were that the crew had perished instantly when the shuttle came apart, a minute after its launch from Kennedy Space Center. Only months later did it become clear that the crew cabin had separated cleanly and had risen to an altitude of 65,000 feet before falling back to impact the ocean with a force of 200 G’s.
Equipment recovered from the wreck showed that at least some of the crew had survived the initial breakup and had activated their safety equipment. Medical specialists later concluded that they soon lost consciousness but were not killed until the impact with the ocean, two minutes after the explosion.
Columbia’s crew had better survival gear, including pressure suits and personal parachutes. Assuming they were conscious of the emergency, they would have closed their visors when cabin pressure was lost. Their suits would have automatically pressurized. It would then be only a question of hoping that the cabin held together until it fell low enough — below 40,000 feet or so — for them to blow the escape hatch and jump free. This would not have seemed an entirely hopeless situation, until the cabin’s own structure began to fail.
No one can know what Columbia’s seven astronauts were actually experiencing and doing in the final seconds of their flight, but the engineers who discussed the possible scenarios were deeply shaken by the implications. The overwhelming consensus is that the lack of knowledge is probably the merciful way it should be.

James Oberg, space analyst for NBC News, spent 22 years at the Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer.

Procedures for shuttle bailout
This excerpt from the Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, a 4-inch-thick "user's manual" published by Johnson Space Center's Flight Crew Operations Directorate, describes how shuttle crew members can use their emergency equipment to bail out of a tumbling shuttle crew module:

Although no formal requirements or plans exist for crewmembers to bail out of the orbiter during uncontrolled flight, they may be able to do so under certain circumstances. The hatch jettison pyrotechnics do not require orbiter power to function and can be activated even if orbiter power is lost. Each crewmember is wearing his or her own emergency oxygen bottles and parachute, and if the crew cabin were not spinning rapidly, at least some of the crewmembers should be able to get to the side hatch and get out.
In the case involving loss of orbiter control, the crewmembers should activate their emergency oxygen as soon as possible and then evaluate the situation. The crew should remain within [the crew module] until it passes through 40,000 feet.... If the cabin is depressurized, the partial pressure bladders in the Launch/Entry Suit will be inflated above 35,000 to 38,000 feet, so the crewmembers can judge altitude in that way.
Once out of the orbiter, crewmembers should pull their parachute D-rings to activate the automatic opening sequence for their parachutes. ... The 18-inch pilot chute is deployed 1.5 seconds later and immediately deploys the 4.5-foot drogue chute. The drogue chute stabilizes the crewmember down to an altitude of 14,000 feet, then deploys the main canopy.

Eagle3

03-05-03, 07:28 AM

New Evidence Of Shuttle Heat (http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsshut053157729mar05,0,3159446.story?coll=ny-health-headlines)
By Earl Lane
WASHINGTON BUREAU

March 5, 2003

Houston - Investigators have found new evidence of the violent heating Columbia experienced during its final moments, including a slag of molten aluminum and stainless steel on the inside of a panel that was part of the leading edge of the shuttle's left wing.

Roger Tetrault, a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, told a news briefing here that some of the slag also has been found on interior fittings that supported other segments of the shuttle's leading edge, which is made of a high-strength composite material called carbon-carbon.

Such damage could be another indication that super-heated gases penetrated the wing of the doomed craft as it entered the Earth's atmosphere, although Tetrault said the board has not come to any conclusions yet on where the breach might have occurred.

"Basically the wing was being eaten from the inside out," Tetrault said later. "We know that." Structures that supported the carbon-carbon segments on Columbia's leading edge were made of stainless steel, which melts at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, Tetrault said. The wing's skin and lattice work of support members are made of aluminum, which melts at about 900 degrees.

Tetrault, a retired industry executive who formerly led a company that built nuclear submarines, also said both tires from the left side of the shuttle's main landing gear "look like they've gone through extreme trauma." He said it appears the damage occurred "very late in this event," whether from hot gas penetration or the heat of re-entry after the shuttle broke apart.

Retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., the head of the investigation board, echoed that view. He said sensor readings indicate the tires were intact until quite late, also making it unlikely a tire blowout had initiated the destruction of the shuttle.

Tetrault said investigators also are finding evidence that molten aluminum had spewed onto many of the heat-resistant tiles recovered so far, both from the left and the right side of the shuttle.

"What's interesting is that we're finding very little of the aluminum fuselage body structure," Tetrault said. That would tend to indicate, he said, "that a lot of that burned up on re-entry and that may be what you are seeing deposited, if you will, on all of these tiles" being found.

Tetrault was quick to admit that "we now have more questions than we have answers." The board's strategy is clear. "What we have to do is follow the heat," he said.

Investigators have been trying to link a pattern of sensor readings on Columbia's left side, computer analyses of possible heat flows and evidence from damage patterns in recovered debris, with an eye to working back to the likely site where hot gases may first have penetrated the craft. They want to determine if the breach occurred in an area that had been struck by foam debris from the shuttle's large external fuel tank shortly after launch.

The task is not easy. Tetrault said it can be difficult to say whether some of the unusual heating effects being seen on pieces of debris occurred during a penetration of the shuttle by hot gases or later as those pieces experienced a fiery re-entry after the shuttle broke apart.

Still, Gehman said, the board remains confident "we are going to determine the direct cause" of the accident and also determine contributing causes. Tetrault described an area of the shuttle's left wing, including near the left wheel well, where investigators believe the breach probably occurred. He gave an 80 percent probability "we're going to find the culprit is somewhere in that area."

In the search for causes contributing to the accident, Gehman said, the board is prepared to examine the NASA culture and whether there was any institutional reluctance to pass on e-mails that discussed possible catastrophic scenarios involving Columbia after the post-launch debris incident. But he said the board first must determine the direct cause of the accident.

Eagle3

03-07-03, 07:48 AM

Witness Chides NASA in Assessing Risk (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54245-2003Mar6.html)

By Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 7, 2003; Page A08

HOUSTON, March 6 -- A former top NASA official who led the last comprehensive review of the space shuttle program after a problem-plagued launch of the Columbia in 1999, told the panel investigating the Feb. 1 shuttle breakup that he was disappointed the agency did not act on more of the 120 recommendations his team had made. Henry McDonald, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and former director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, said that risk assessments before Columbia's disintegration during reentry, appears to fit into the same pattern of muddled analysis cited in the earlier report.

"It's a replay," he told reporters after the session.

McDonald, testifying during the first public hearing of the investigating board, said NASA has again fallen prey to "systemic" flaws in reasoning -- such as the creeping acceptance of poorly understood risks in operating the space shuttle -- that may require major changes in the agency's culture and technology to correct. McDonald, a data management specialist, said he was particularly concerned that NASA, despite prodigious efforts and the best of intentions, had failed to upgrade its aged database and computer systems to allow it to track subtle but unacceptable trends, such as the tendency of foam insulation to come loose from the shuttle's giant external fuel tank during launch. The impact of tank debris on the orbiter's heat shielding, possibly made more lethal by embedded ice, is suspected as a cause of the Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts. Citing the history of failing foam insulation, McDonald said, "When someone like [shuttle project manager] Ron Dittemore goes and tries to make an assessment of what his risk is, the instant access to all that past history would have been invaluable, but they had not in my view given that sufficiently high priority." Retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., who is chairman of the board, told McDonald his report was "eerily prescient."

Joe Rothenberg, NASA's top human space flight official at the time the report was issued, said in a phone interview yesterday that, to the best of his recollection, "We took action on all of them in some form. . . . Some of the things [McDonald] would have liked were almost impossible." He recalled that when the agency attempted to upgrade and integrate the complex risk assessment database, engineers encountered a "translation problem," because the technical terminology of one shuttle division was alien to the next. "The propulsion people talk in one set of terms" and flight operations in another, Rothenberg said. That recommendation "did galvanize the agency into significant effort in that regard," McDonald agreed, "but as to implementing these procedures, no." McDonald was also critical of what he called the shuttle program's fuzzy definitions of risk, embodied in such phrases as "in family, out of family," whose meaning might vary from one worker to another. "Fair wear and tear was a subjective judgment," he added.

McDonald's review panel also found that NASA employees were getting conflicting signals about safety, McDonald said. Based on one-on-one interviews, members of the shuttle workforce were "clearly, deeply concerned both about the turmoil in the agency" as it strove for greater efficiency, and the possibility that, under an initiative then underway to contract out more work, they might have to shift to the private sector. "There most certainly was this mixed message" that safety was very important, but at the same time the agency was cutting back on safety inspections that had previously been mandatory. Shuttle program manager Dittemore testified earlier in the day that some cutbacks in inspections were proper and did not affect safety. "But from [the employees'] perspective, I don't think we did a good job of convincing them these were necessary," McDonald said later.

The March 2000 report by McDonald's Space Shuttle Independent Assessment Team was triggered by problems that occurred on a 1999 shuttle flight, resulting in part from a decision by managers to eliminate a preflight test that had previously been required. Engineers failed to detect problems with a pin in a main engine part that came loose during the mission and punctured two cooling tubes. Backup systems kicked in and the shuttle made it to orbit and returned safely, but the incident alerted NASA to a potential wiring problem in the entire shuttle fleet, which was temporarily grounded. Then-NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin commissioned the independent review and directed McDonald to "leave no stone unturned." "It was creeping risk," Rothenberg agreed. "It bothered me, too. The issue was not the fact of this problem [the loose pin]. It was, gee, we added risk on risk."

McDonald said his team discovered that the shuttle program's database did not properly record the history of problems with the pins. "Indeed, the real probability of a pin ejection was 1 in 10. I don't think anybody realized that that was the probability," he said. McDonald said the shuttle team has been lulled by repeated successes. "I think there's a flaw in the reasoning of many well-intentioned people" in forgetting that "if you've a 1 in 100 chance of risk of an event occurring, the event can occur on the first or the last [opportunity], and there's an equal probability each time." He said the perception within the agency seemed to be "that if I've flown 20 times, the risk is less than if I've just flown once. And we were continually attempting to inform them that unless they've changed the risk positively, they still have the same issue even after 50 flights or 60 flights.""The availability of more information to people like Dittemore would result in a change in the culture, automatically," McDonald said after the session.

Another witness at the hearing, held on the campus of the University of Houston at Clear Lake, was Boeing engineer Keith Chong, an expert on foam insulation. Previously a member of a shuttle external tank review team, and now in Boeing's Delta 4 rocket program, he told the board he would recommend that NASA adopt a nondestructive test method that has worked well in the Delta program. It uses a laser to determine if the foam insulation has properly bonded to the tank. Chong also said the foam insulation on the outside of the tank, though 90 percent waterproof because of its closed-cell composition, might after long exposure on the launch pad soak up patches of moisture in places where the foam has been "shaved." He agreed with Gehman's suggestion that, when the tank is filled with super-cooled propellants, the moisture might form ice.

Eagle3

03-10-03, 07:33 AM

Columbia crew may have attempted to fly manuall (http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.nat10mar10,0,2665260.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines)
Orlando Sentinel
Originally published March 10, 2003

CAPE CANAVERAL - A NASA timeline offers a conflicting glimpse inside shuttle Columbia's cockpit, where some data indicate the astronauts may have tried to take the ship off autopilot and fly manually in the final seconds of the doomed flight.

Other data, pieced together from the last two seconds of garbled information beamed down from the ship, suggest Columbia remained on computer control.

"We don't know for sure whether the commander or pilot tried to take control, but it certainly wouldn't be unheard of," said a Johnson Space Center manager, who asked not to be named. "We may never know."

The conflicting signals are part of the Feb. 27 timeline obtained by the Orlando Sentinel that painstakingly documents Columbia's plunge from orbit to its eventual destruction over Texas on Feb. 1.

Information from the last two seconds paints a picture of a heavily damaged ship, possibly missing some or all of its left wing and its left-side maneuvering rocket pod.

Instruments showed Columbia's nose veering left at 20 degrees per second, the maximum the shuttle's sensors could measure. The actual tumble rate may have been greater, meaning Columbia was in a slow downward spiral, taking no more than 18 seconds to complete a revolution.

The timeline also indicates a master alarm went off inside the cockpit at 8:59 a.m. It was a minute later when the data hint at the possibility that either Commander Rick Husband or pilot Willie McCool grabbed the stick, as if to fly Columbia manually. It is also possible the signals were in error.

Regardless, the timeline clearly shows the astronauts would not have been able to control the ship, which had suffered severe damage to some parts of the left side by that point. A leading theory is that the left wing was breached along its leading edge, allowing hot gases to get inside and destroy the wing from within.

"In the time period that we're talking about, the wing is disintegrating," said a source close to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board that is overseeing the search for the accident's cause.

While things were clearly happening on the left side, the rest of the shuttle was intact and many major systems were working normally. Investigators have pinpointed the start of Columbia's breakup at 9:00:21.

Eagle3

03-14-03, 06:43 AM

Shuttle board looks at wind shear, age (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/03/11/sprj.colu.wind.shear.ap/index.html)
HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- The Columbia accident investigation board raised the possibility Tuesday that an unusually strong wind shear a minute into the flight weakened the shuttle's left side. The board also suggested the age of the spacecraft may have contributed to the catastrophe. Retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, the accident board's chairman, said he and others are trying to determine "whether or not NASA was alert enough, whether or not they were doing all the right things" to detect aging as a threat to the shuttle fleet. "If you agree with the theory that complex systems fail in complex ways, it isn't a matter of just a bracket breaking. It's a matter of a whole series of unfortunate events," Gehman said at a news conference.
Wind made wing vulnerable?

The leading theory is that damage to the left wing allowed hot gases to penetrate the shuttle and destroy it over Texas on February 1, killing all seven astronauts. A few pieces of insulating foam or other debris broke off the external fuel tank 81 seconds after liftoff and slammed into the leading edge of Columbia's left wing. But the board also indicated the wing may have been made more vulnerable to debris damage because it was buffeted by unusual wind shear about 20 seconds earlier in the liftoff.

The wind shear was within NASA's safety limits, but it was the strongest gust ever seen so close to the point where the shuttle is exposed to the maximum aerodynamic stress of liftoff, the board said. That point occurs around 80 seconds into a launch. "One of the scenarios we're looking at, it's possible that the foam striking a healthy orbiter would not have done enough damage to cause the loss," Gehman said. But he noted that Columbia may have been "unhealthy," because of the wind shear, aging or other factors. "A normal event, which she could have survived at age 10, maybe she couldn't survive at age 21," he said. The board also revealed that the fuel tank had been removed from its set of booster rockets last August. The two boosters were needed for another flight. In November, Columbia's tank finally was attached to another pair of boosters.

Visual inspection questioned

Air Force Maj. Gen. John Barry, a board member, said the removal of the boosters may have introduced problems or weaknesses in the spot where the foam ultimately came off. A visual inspection of the suspect foam area, called the bipod, was done and found nothing wrong, but he said more testing may have been required to find any cracks or other foam flaws. "Our question really is ... is it adequate enough to just do a visual inspection," Barry said. He said he and his colleagues are pursuing a "follow the foam" strategy in hopes of ascertaining whether that alone -- or in conjunction with other things -- damaged the protective heat panels on the leading edge of the left wing enough to allow the hot deadly gases of atmospheric re-entry to penetrate 16 days later. "You have to address the issue of aging spacecraft in an R-and-D environment," Barry said, referring to research and development. "We've never been there before."

Possible voids

Barry said he is ordering an analysis of the heat-resistant carbon panels that line the leading edge of the wings, to determine the thoroughness of testing between flights. It is possible that voids could have developed under these panels, because of oxidation eating away at the carbon, he said. "Think of termites," Gehman said. One of the many questions, Barry said, is whether the panel inspections were good enough given the age of the shuttle fleet.

Columbia made the first shuttle flight in 1981.

Eagle3

03-19-03, 03:06 PM

NASA Says Single Cause for Shuttle Disaster May Never Be Found (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81567,00.html)
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Investigators may never find a single definitive cause for the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said Wednesday.

Contributing factors could include hardware failure, failures of processes and procedures during the flight or bad judgment calls, O'Keefe told the NASA Advisory Council at Stennis Space Flight Center. He did not elaborate on those factors.

"I bet it's going to be a combination of all three," O'Keefe said during an address to the council, which is comprised of private professionals who advise NASA on various issues.

"We're six weeks into this and there's not going to be an `ah-hah'," he said.

However, O'Keefe said he does expect answers that will enable NASA to return the shuttle to flight.

"My personal sense is that the problem is definable and the problem is fixable," O'Keefe said.

On Tuesday, the head of an independent board that is investigating what caused the Feb. 1 loss of Columbia said the group already is preparing to make some suggestions on how NASA can improve its operations.

"There are a couple of (recommendations) that are percolating up to where we think they are benign enough, obvious enough that we don't need any further research," retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., the board's chairman, said Tuesday after the group's weekly news conference. "We're as anxious as everybody else is to get everything on the table so they can make the (return to flight) as quickly as they can."

Gehman said one of the first recommendations the board could make in the next week or so is that NASA needs to improve its communications with other governmental intelligence agencies. He wants the space agency to better coordinate how resources such as spy satellites and telescopes can be used to photograph the shuttle during orbit to detect problems.

"It's not a security issue. It's a bureaucratic issue," Gehman said. "This is a system that broke."

The board suspects that the heat-shielding tiles on Columbia's left wing were breached, possibly by insulating foam or other material falling from the external fuel tank, during the Jan. 16 launch. As it aimed for a Florida landing on Feb. 1, the shuttle broke apart over Texas, killing all seven astronauts.

On Tuesday, board member and physicist James Hallock said atmospheric gases at 3,000 degrees filled Columbia's left wheel well, melting part of a titanium door mechanism. The hot gases were eventually ejected from both sides of an exterior door.

"Sometime during the event we had very, very hot temperatures in (the wheel well). What we're hoping to be able to do is home in on possibly where this breach actually occurred. We're not yet ready to turn around and say here is the story but we're getting many, many pieces of that puzzle."

Hallock also said he's doubtful a micrometeoroid or piece of space junk caused the hole that let superheated gases penetrate the left wing.

During its meeting, board members said an object seen orbiting near Columbia one day into its 16-day flight was more than likely a "carrier panel" from a wing. These rectangular parts are behind the carbon leading-edge panels, connecting the carbon pieces to thermal tiles on the wing. The piece re-entered the atmosphere and burned up a few days later.

Eagle3

03-20-03, 07:43 AM

Data recorder found intact may provide shuttle clues (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/1827056)
A data recorder has been found, apparently intact, from the shattered Columbia and its magnetic tape may hold clues to the spaceship's destruction in the skies over Texas. "It's very, very promising, but we just won't know how useful it's going to be until they're able to retrieve the data," Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the accident investigation board, said Wednesday night.

The recorder, found by a search team earlier in the day near Hemphill in East Texas, could hold valuable information about temperatures and aerodynamic pressures on Columbia in its final minutes of flight, Brown said. She likened it to an airplane's black box. "We have no way of knowing whether the data can be recovered," she said. But she added that if it can, "it will give us, hopefully, a lot of information about what was going on with the orbiter." In fact, it could be one of the most significant pieces of shuttle debris found in the six weeks since the accident. The discovery was all the more thrilling for NASA and the investigation board because it had been days since any major pieces of the shuttle had been found. The recorder, which sustained some heat damage, was sent to Johnson Space Center for analysis. Brown said these recorders -- called the orbiter experiment support systems -- normally are turned on right before a space shuttle begins its descent through the atmosphere and run for one or two hours.

Columbia broke apart during its atmospheric re-entry on Feb. 1, just minutes short of a planned Florida touchdown. The investigation board suspects the left wing of Columbia was breached, possibly by launch debris 16 days earlier, and that searing atmospheric gases penetrated the hole and carved a deadly path through the wing and into the left landing gear compartment. All seven astronauts were killed. About 30,000 pieces of Columbia have been found, representing nearly 20 percent of the descending shuttle.

NASA's space shuttles have a variety of computers and data recorders, but nothing directly comparable to the black boxes on airplanes that give crash investigators detailed flight information. Brown said the recovered data recorder is of a type used for the initial shuttle flights back in the early 1980s, to collect information from sensors. It was modified over the years, she said.

Earlier Wednesday, well before the recorder was found and identified, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said investigators may never find a single definitive cause for the catastrophe. "We're six weeks into this and there's not going to be an `ah-hah'," he told the NASA Advisory Council at Stennis Space Flight Center in Mississippi. O'Keefe said contributing factors could include hardware failure, the breakdown of processes and pr