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.
Jay Lawson, a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the
University of Nevada, Reno, said he didn’t see any apparent problems while
watching the shuttle in the predawn sky a little before 6 a.m. But Lawson
said he saw something unexpected while watching his tape a few minutes
later.
“There was a flash of light, a puff in the ionization trail,” said
Lawson, a 45-year-old manager at Sparks-based Sierra Nevada Corp., a
defense contractor.
After the flash, Lawson noticed a smaller object trailing the shuttle
on the video, which he said might have been a piece of the spacecraft that
had broken off.
Mission Control abruptly lost contact with the shuttle at 6 a.m. PST.
The spacecraft apparently disintegrated in flames over Texas minutes
before its scheduled landing in Florida at 6:16 a.m.
After viewing the shuttle from Sparks, Lawson went inside to watch it
land on television. It was then he learned the grim news. He woke up his
wife.
“It was a pretty emotional thing to realize, that early in the morning
that people had lost their lives,” Lawson said.
Keith Johnson, the planetarium’s associate director, said he sent NASA
a clip of Lawson’s video footage, which was shot about 10 minutes before
Columbia disintegrated 39 miles over Texas. The shuttle passed to the
south of Lake Tahoe, about 45 miles above Nevada.
NASA spokesman Phil West said investigators are interested in the tape
as well as all other footage and eyewitness accounts of Columbia’s
disintegration.
The tape will be evaluated by a team of experts at a later date, he
said.
“It’s unlikely that we would be able to comment on any specific tape or
imagery today,” West said Saturday. “But we’re interested in seeing any
images and accounts people have of the event.”
Johnson said the shuttle, as seen from Reno, was smaller than a full
moon but bigger than a star. It moved faster than a satellite, slower than
a meteor, and left behind a long trail.
“There’s no question about what it was,” Johnson said. “It was
spectacular.”
Many others from northern Nevada and eastern California reported seeing
the shuttle trail across the sky.
Adam Kremers, a technician at the planetarium, also woke up early
Saturday to see the shuttle reentry.
He watched the bright orange glow start in the western sky and quickly
move to the southeast.
Then he went back to bed.
“My wife woke me up at 8, ‘turn on the TV, something had gone wrong,’”
Kremers said. “I was crushed. You don’t believe it at first.”
Other residents saw something unusual in the early morning sky on
Saturday but did not know what it was.
Kathleen Gardiner of Washoe Valley was looking out her window from bed
a little before 6 a.m. when she saw a reddish orange ball trailing what
looked like smoke and moving extremely fast.
“A few minutes later I turned on the TV and put two and two together,”
she said. “What a sad day. I pray for the families of the shuttle
crew.”
Mike Spanier, a Hawthorne resident, said he was on his way to work at a
resource center for children when he saw a streak in the sky.
“It was neon pink I mean really bright neon pink and to my eye it was
the size of a football or basketball. You saw the vapor trail. I would say
about two to three miles to my eye,” Spanier said. “I looked up and I had
to stop and look at it.”
He said he wonders whether, if it was the shuttle, any pieces landed in
northern Nevada. “If it is possible there are pieces over in Nevada, they
need to be looking for those too.”
With wire services
