Posted on 02/10/2003 3:56:05 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Mystery object draws interest
Investigators weighing whether chunk of ice damaged Columbia
02/10/2003
HOUSTON - A mysterious object - possibly a softball-size chunk of ice - that fell off Columbia gained NASA's interest Sunday, but investigators said again that virtually nothing has been ruled out.
As the search for clues for what went wrong entered its second week in the shuttle disaster, the agency is considering a big change for the astronauts left in space.
NASA and its Russian counterpart may swap the three explorers now aboard the International Space Station for two to be launched in April aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle.
Supplies of water, used for drinking and for producing oxygen, are running low, and the proposed crew transfer could be the best approach to get the astronauts down while the shuttle program remains on hold.
On Sunday, officials provided new details in their search for why the shuttle disintegrated, including a closer examination of parts found in Texas.
They were trying to identify the unknown object that was spotted near the shuttle one day after its Jan. 16 launch. A Department of Defense radar at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida detected a small object moving away from Columbia at around 11 mph.
NASA officials were quick to point out that the object could have been something deliberately released from the shuttle, such as discarded wastewater. But they have not ruled out that it may have been a more critical part coming loose.
"Nothing is off the table," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said.
Meanwhile, the leader of the independent investigation board into Columbia's loss told reporters that NASA had just learned of the object's existence and would work to determine its importance.
"These reports are emerging right now," said retired Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., head of an independent investigative panel. "It's too early to say if they mean anything."
RICHARD MICHAEL PRUITT / DMN Volunteer Ron Judd (left) and Paul Harris of the Harrison County sheriff's office search for debris near Nacogdoches. |
The radar, operated by the U.S. Strategic Command near Omaha, Neb., usually monitors space for the roughly 9,000 pieces of man-made debris that float there, posing a hazard to the space station, the space shuttle and satellites.
Whenever the shuttle is launched, the Defense Department and NASA work closely to ensure that it will travel in a path free of debris.
But 24 hours and 20 minutes after Columbia was launched, the radar spotted an object moving away from the orbiter. Two days later, the object entered the atmosphere and burned up.
Radar finding
The discovery was made after Defense Department officials reviewed radar data at NASA's request. No one at NASA, or aboard Columbia, was aware that anything was happening at the time, said NASA spokesman John Ira Petty.
Investigators are trying to determine whether any wastewater was dumped from the shuttle around the time the object appeared. Water, Mr. Petty said, would have sprayed out in a cloud of ice crystals, which might not have survived for two days in orbit.
Another explanation could be a chunk of ice - such pieces sometimes build up on water vent nozzles and then break loose, he said.
The object also could have been a piece of hardware that escaped from the shuttle's payload bay undetected. It could even have been a meteorite, although space experts doubt this because of the relatively slow speed it was traveling.
Liftoff damage
Until now, suspicion has focused on a chunk of foam insulation that broke loose 80 seconds after launch and struck the lower part of the left wing. The left wing is where temperature readings soared before Columbia disintegrated while entering the atmosphere over Texas.
MICHAEL MULVEY / DMN Texas Department of Public Safety officers and volunteers get ready to head into Sabine National Forest to search for debris from the space shuttle Columbia. |
Damage to material on the leading edge of the space shuttles wings posed one of the highest risks of a catastrophic accident, NASA studies conducted during the last four years found. The studies focused predominantly on the damage that could be done by even a small piece of debris or a meteoroid traveling at high speed hitting the wing edge, which is made of lightweight material.
But engineers for NASA and one of its leading contractors told The New York Times there was comparatively little testing to determine if slower-moving debris - such as the insulation that fell off the shuttle's external tank at liftoff - posed a similar hazard.
Investigators 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.
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 showed 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.
Audio transmission
And officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston were still trying Sunday to determine whether an additional 32 seconds' worth of data, gathered after Columbia's last audio transmission, contained any useful information.
The quest has proved harder than expected. NASA says that there may be useful information in the first few and the final seconds of that data but that much of it may be useless.
Mr. O'Keefe said no theory has been excluded.
"There's nothing that's obviously leading us to any conclusion, and we don't want to go down one road just to find out that we've ignored some other avenue that might have been productive to look at," he said.
Monday morning, the independent investigative board headed by Adm. Gehman gets back to work. Although he and the other members of the Columbia investigation board were appointed by NASA, Adm. Gehman said the board's charter gives members the authority to conduct testing in laboratories not affiliated with the space agency.
He said Sunday that the board would split up into three teams and that each would gather data at different NASA centers. This will speed up the investigation, he said.
The board has 60 days to complete its investigation. Some critics say the board needs more time, noting that the commission that investigated the 1986 Challenger accident required 120 days to complete its investigation.
The astronauts who died were David Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, William McCool and Ilan Ramon.
BARBARA DAVIDSON / DMN Suresh Patel (left) and Girish Pandya observed a moment of silence in honor of fallen astronaut Kalpana Chawla during a memorial in her honor at the Mahatma Gandhi Community Center in Houston on Sunday. |
In Houston, the Mahatma Gandhi Community Center honored Dr. Chawla, a mission specialist and native of India, during a memorial Sunday.
Shuttle on hold
NASA's shuttle missions are on hold, but Mr. O'Keefe said that the agency is still preparing to resume flights as soon as the cause of Columbia's breakup is determined and any shuttle problems are fixed. "We've still got folks aboard the International Space Station," he said.
Tuesday morning, reporters are scheduled to hear from the crew: astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Don Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin.
All three have been busy unloading and stowing cargo from a Russian Progress vehicle that delivered fresh supplies to the station last week.
The three had been scheduled to return to Earth in March aboard the shuttle Atlantis. But with shuttle launches indefinitely postponed, their only option seems to be aboard a Russian vehicle. The next space station crew was to have consisted of astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko and Alexander Kaleri.
The station was designed to hold as many as seven astronauts. This would be the first time it has housed just two.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
E-mail awitze@dallasnews.com
http://www.wfaa.com/watchvideo/index.jsp?SID=3683978
Requires RealPlayer
Video shows shuttle may have shed debris over Arizona -
check out this video taken by amateurs
Video link: Shuttle over D/FW, Texas
Very close-up, slo-mo of the Columbia launch debris
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
