http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/shuttle_main030205.html
Credit Card-Sized Clue? Crews Sent West Amid Reports of Columbia Wreckage in Calif., Ariz. ABC News February 5, 2003 A credit card-sized piece of debris found by a California couple in their driveway could be a fragment of the space shuttle Columbia that NASA investigators hope will give them new clues into what caused the orbiter to disintegrate, killing all seven astronauts aboard. If the tiny piece, found by a couple who live near the Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, is from the shuttle, it could be the kind of scrap of evidence that engineers hope will tell them volumes about what happened to the shuttle. The couple gave the fragment to the local sheriff, NASA officials said. NASA engineers want to know exactly where the heat spike that occurred just before the shuttle disintegrated began, because it could give them the crucial clue to what went wrong. They are examining 32 seconds of computer data that came just before all communications with Columbia were lost and hope to have some information from that data today. As many NASA officials took time off to mourn their fallen colleagues at a memorial service on Tuesday, teams of investigators were dispatched to California and Arizona to respond to reports of pieces of the shuttle being found there. Witnesses have reported to NASA investigators that parts of Columbia began falling off Saturday morning as it flew over California and Arizona - before the ship disintegrated over Texas. Early reports, officials said, indicate that the debris belongs to the shuttle's wing. Investigators hope the reported debris - if connected to the Columbia - will help them piece together what caused the fatal accident. The parts would represent the early stages of Columbia's disintegration and could give insight into what went wrong with the aircraft. "We've had reports that there are pieces on the ground in California and Arizona, and because we feel these results are potentially credible, we have dispatched NASA recovery teams to go and take a look at this material," said Michael Kostelnik, NASA deputy administrator. NASA engineers are also studying video footage of Columbia's re-entry, including a three-minute amateur tape shot in Arizona that appears to show pieces of the shuttle breaking off as it streaked across the dark sky. Bigger Pieces Less Important Kostelnik said larger and denser pieces of Columbia, including one of the engines, fell in Louisiana and are being recovered, but investigators are most interested in seeing the smaller pieces that may have fallen further West, because those would have been the first pieces to have fallen from the shuttle. Those pieces, because they are all coded to indicate which part of the shuttle they came from, could tell investigators where on the craft the trouble started. Investigators also are getting new military photographs of the Columbia's fiery streak across the country from an Apache helicopter that was flying during its re-entry and recorded the shuttle's path. In addition, investigators in Florida have studied sea currents in the Atlantic Ocean near the Kennedy Space Center, trying to determine where heat tiles or other parts that might have fallen off the Columbia during its launch would have wound up. NASA officials are also examining devices that measure winds from the ground, up to 53,000 feet in altitude. These devices show that particles from the shuttle were falling over Louisiana and east Texas for about five hours. Pinpointing the Beginning of the Problem Investigators in Houston intend to study every second of data that Columbia sent back during its flight, trying to determine exactly when and where the problem started - with the analysis focused on what effect the loss of tiles during the craft's launch might have had on its re-entry. The prime suspect in the disaster is insulating tile damage that occurred in the first 80 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 16. A 20-by-16-inch piece of insulation foam that weighed three pounds broke off the gas tank approximately 80 seconds after liftoff and hit the underside of the left wing of Columbia. At the time, NASA experts looked at the damage and dismissed it as possible cause of any potential problems. They even looked at the possibility that tiles could have been missing over an area as large as 7 inches by 30 inches, but on the shuttle's 12th day in space, engineers concluded that the damage would not be "sufficient to cause a catastrophic event," according to a NASA memo. But as the shuttle re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Saturday, there was a sharp rise in temperature on the left side of the craft before the shuttle broke up. Kostelnik said Tuesday that the piece of foam that fell off Columbia was perhaps the largest to have fallen off any of the shuttles during launch, but officials did not believe at the time that it posed a catastrophic danger. Investigators are now working on the assumption that the insulation foam did enough damage that those tiles were unable to protect the shuttle from extreme heat on re-entry. Still, investigators say, on almost every shuttle flight, the craft has lost some of the more than 24,000 tiles that cover it to protect it from the heat of re-entry. Some parts of the shuttle are more critical than others, though, when it comes to safeguarding the craft. Sensors show there were unusually high temperatures on the left side and especially in the wheel well, but the investigators examining the data are not convinced that is where the problem began. Shuttle Parts Found in Texas Searchers found more key parts of the shuttle in Hemphill, Texas, recovering parts of its fuselage, circuit boards and landing gear. Searchers found the shuttle's nose cone late Monday. All these parts could help investigators figure out Columbia's trajectory and provide other clues. "Some of those parts can possibly be processed in a way that will give you an indication of what was going on during the last few seconds when the shuttle was obviously desperately trying to adjust its altitude and stay on the flight path," ABCNEWS space consultant Jim Slade said. Officials have told ABCNEWS that remains of the astronauts will be taken today from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for examination. Identification will need to be done almost entirely through DNA analysis. The remains of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon have already been identified, and they will be returned to Israel today for burial. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
