Left wing fragment could be key discovery - Columbia investigators sort pieces of the puzzle

WASHINGTON - In perhaps the most significant development since Columbia disintegrated Feb. 1 over Texas, NASA confirmed Monday that it has found and is examining a piece of the shuttle's left wing.

Michael C. Kostelnik, a NASA deputy associate administrator, said the 1 ½-foot wing fragment was discovered last week near Corsicana and had been taken to Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La.

The section - which includes a 2-foot piece of carbon-composite panel, the dense material that covers the leading edge - was located west of the main debris field in East Texas and Louisiana, which could indicate it fell earlier than other pieces.

Investigators are eager to analyze segments of Columbia's left wing because it was there that the first signs of calamity - such as heightened wind resistance - appeared. The shuttle breakup killed all seven crew members.

Mr. Kostelnik said NASA officials did not yet know whether the carbon panel or the silica glass-fiber thermal tiles on the wing were burned through by the intense heat of re-entry or damaged another way.

NASA said it also has found the cover of one of the two landing gear compartments, another possibly critical piece because a temperature surge inside the left wheel well was the first sign of trouble. Officials do not yet know whether the recovered part is from the right or left side.

Those pieces are among some 12,000 pieces of debris that have been recovered in Texas and Louisiana. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Monday that the material would be taken from Barksdale to a hangar at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first shipment was expected to arrive Wednesday.

At Kennedy, members of the independent board investigating the accident will take control of the debris and oversee any effort to assemble the pieces.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, led by retired Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., announced it would hold its first news conference Tuesday in Houston. That's when Adm. Gehman and the other members of the board "will be laying out how they plan to operate," NASA spokesman Ed Campion said.

Board members are expected to interview NASA managers and visit the facility where the shuttle's thermal protection tiles are made when they visit Kennedy Space Center later in the week. They will spend two days in Florida before going to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., a NASA official said.

Mr. O'Keefe pledged full cooperation with the board, whose members have collectively investigated more than 50 transportation accidents and acts of terrorism, including the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

"We're in pursuit of the answers," Mr. O'Keefe said, promising that NASA would make public any recommendations as soon as the board conveyed them.

He said the independent board, created before the accident as part of a NASA contingency plan and appointed by Mr. O'Keefe, had its first teleconference the afternoon of Columbia's breakup and was at Barksdale the next day.

Had the board not convened so quickly, Mr. O'Keefe said, "an awful lot of the trails might have gone cold."

The board is meeting on the top floor of a 20,000-square-foot, two-story office building about a mile northwest of Johnson Space Center. The space is leased by United Space Alliance, the lead private contractor for the shuttle program.

"It was just a case of trying to find the right amount of office space that would be close" to Johnson Space Center, Mr. Campion said. "If they want to come on site to look at something or talk to somebody, they're close."

Nevertheless, the location is certain to fuel questions about the board's independence. Relying on NASA investigators and NASA support doesn't appear independent enough to instill full confidence, said Jim Hall, former National Transportation Safety Board chairman.

"I'm not saying anybody is doing anything improper," he said Monday, but "if they're not going to use the NTSB, it should be something that they ask an independent entity to do and have in place before an event such as this occurs."

By law, the NTSB investigates transportation accidents involving trucks, trains, airplanes and even commercial space ventures - but not the military or NASA, Mr. Hall said. In the early '90s, NASA invited the NTSB to serve on an investigative team, he said, but his agency declined because it wouldn't have been in charge.

The investigative process NASA has followed for the Columbia disaster follows a military model, agency spokesman Allard Beutel said.

"The NTSB does civilian aircraft," he said. "What if an accident happened in space? That may not be in their area of expertise."

Most observers consider the NASA approach a significant improvement over the stance the agency took after the Challenger disaster in 1986.

Little information was disclosed for weeks after Challenger blew up on launch, killing seven astronauts; eventually, critics decided NASA was covering up mistakes. The White House appointed a special commission headed by former Secretary of State William Rogers to investigate, and its report severely criticized NASA.

Adm. Gehman's board probably will divide into three teams, each assigned to areas of interest, NASA officials said.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., said last week that crew members were concerned enough about possible damage to the left wing that they photographed it from the cabin and that crew member David Brown told his brother about the photos in an e-mail.

On Monday, Douglas Brown, Capt. Brown's brother, released a statement through NASA clarifying what he discussed with the senator.

"Dave sent several personal emails during the mission, but at no time did he write about any concerns with damage to the left wing of the orbiter or any other safety issues," the statement read. "As they reached orbit, Dave took his planned photos of the external tank separation, which is standard procedure. These are the photos I discussed with Senator Allen."

With the only hard evidence consisting of debris seared by blowtorch heat as it fell to Earth, some experts said NASA may never know for sure what doomed Columbia - an unsettling thought so early in the investigation.

For instance, one of the strongest pieces of Columbia was so badly twisted when the craft came apart that investigators said it looked like it had been in an explosion. The 10-foot-long cargo bay hinge point was among the items collected in a hangar at Barksdale. It was shown publicly for the first time Monday when officials allowed two photographers to tour the sprawling storage area before the debris is shipped to Florida.

Jerry Grey, director of science and technology policy for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said he doubted investigators would get much information from the debris.

"Chances are it's going to be very badly burned and damaged," he said. "We may just have to draw logical probability conclusions as to what happened.

"Even if they identify a tile or a segment that had been burned, was it burned on the way down or was it burned before?"

Staff writer Bruce Nichols in Houston and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.wfaa.com/watchvideo/index.jsp?SID=3683978
Requires RealPlayer

Amateur tape shows what appears to be an object
breaking off Columbia over Arizona.

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

ROBERT McCULLOUGH / © 2003, DMN
Space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it hurtled
across North Texas shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday.
The image was taken in Flower Mound.


	Posted on Tue, Feb. 11, 2003

	Azle man says he helped recover wing By Jack Douglas Jr. Star-Telegram Staff Writer AZLE - A local avionics expert said Monday he helped recover the "leading edge" of Columbia's left wing -- and nearly got arrested for his efforts. Paul Miller, president of an aircraft simulator company in Azle, said that he helped a state trooper on Tuesday identify the chunk of debris, found near a rural road eight miles from Nacogdoches, near Lufkin. Miller said he felt good about participating in such an important discovery until Thursday when, he said, 20 state police officers armed with guns squeezed into his office, asking about the shuttle wing and glaring at potential Columbia "fragments" on his desktop. "They thought I had the [ wing] here," Miller said. Miller said that the officers, accompanied by three NASA investigators, "treated me like an outright criminal" until a high-level space agency supervisor told them over the phone that Miller had earlier in the week assisted in the massive search efforts in East Texas. Alan Buis, a NASA spokesman in Houston, said he could neither confirm nor deny whether Miller helped find the "leading edge" to Columbia's left wing, considered a possible key link to whatever caused the shuttle disaster on Feb. 1 that killed seven astronauts. "There is no more information available regarding how it [the wing portion] was found ... I wish I could be more helpful," Buis said. Since Friday, NASA investigators have indicated that the wing section was found near Fort Worth, but refused to provide specifics. On Monday, some news services reported that NASA said the piece was actually found near Lufkin, and others declared it was found near Corsicana. But Miller said the piece was actually found southeast of Nacogdoches by a state trooper who asked for Miller's expertise in identifying it. "Oh, my God, NASA needs that now," Miller said he told the trooper. The wing section was loaded onto the back of a pickup and escorted by authorities to a collection site at the nearby Nacogdoches Airport. After that, Miller said he would later learn, "it was lost for two complete days." Miller was back in his office in Azle on Thursday, feeling proud of his work in East Texas, when he got a call from an official with the Environmental Protection Agency in Nacogdoches, who asked where the wing section was. "He was in a hangar standing right next to it, and he didn't know what it looked like," said Miller, referring to the EPA official. He said he apparently upset the official because, within two hours, the state troopers and the NASA officials were at his office door. Investigators at the hangar in Nacogdoches also called Tony Collett, a geography student at Stephen F. Austin State University and the owner of the pickup who took the possible wing section to the collection site. "They called me and I described it to them," Collett said, adding that the person on the other end of the line responded: "Never mind, we see it." Miller acknowledged that he brought several pieces of potential shuttle debris back to Fort Worth, but only after they were "left unattended on the side of the road" by officers. Miller and his wife took those pieces on Wednesday to a Columbia debris collection site at the naval air station in west Fort Worth. Jack Douglas Jr., (817) 390-7700 jld@star-telegram.com

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