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NASA memo warned of possible trouble

AM - Tuesday, February 4, 2003 8:17

LINDA MOTTRAM: The US space agency, NASA, is facing new pressure after an internal memo was leaked with a warning that space shuttle Columbia could have suffered damage to it's heat shield shortly after lift off. It disintegrated, of course, on entry, two days ago.

NASA officials are now trying to explain the memo while they're also facing allegations that the Agency removed five members of its safety review panel, in a bid to suppress their criticism.

From Houston, John Shovelan reports.

JOHN SHOVELAN: Just two days before the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated a team of NASA engineers sent an internal memo which discussed possible problems on re-entry for the Orbiter.

The memo estimated there was a high probability heat shielding tiles beneath the left wing had suffered a gash about 22 centimetres wide and about eighty centimetres long during the launch.

Foam debris, which could have weighed fifty kilos or more, broke away from an external fuel tank striking the thermal tiles.

Today NASA's Deputy Administrator, Michael Kostelnik, said he had not seen the memo alerting to possible dangers on re-entry.

MICHAEL KOSTELNIK: That is actually the first I have heard of that memo. The best and brightest engineers we have who helped build and design that system looked carefully at all the analysis and the information we had at this time and made a determination this was not a safety or flight issue.

JOHN SHOVELAN: The Columbia's underside was covered in twenty thousand thermal tiles designed to protect it from temperatures of up to three thousand degrees.

If tiles were seriously damaged on takeoff, or knocked loose, the abnormal increases in temperature could twist the shuttle structure causing more damage to its heat shield.

But NASA's Deputy Administrator William Readdy said the incident at launch was not serious.

WILLIAM READDY: We did see that on the film. We saw it at about eighty seconds and on the twelfth day of the mission, the mission evaluation was that these thermal analyses indicate possible localised structural damage, but no burn through and no safety of flight issue and I quote.

JOHN SHOVELAN: NASA has gone out of its way to make this investigation open, because after the Challenger it was accused of covering up.

MICHAEL KOSTELNIK: This will be probably the most open accident investigation on a magnitude of this scale that people have experienced in this time.

JOHN SHOVELAN: The memo though again raises questions about just how open NASA really is.

As a result of its management signing off on the assessment that the incident on lift off was not significant, telescopic and spy satellite imagery was not requested to examine the suspect area, and Columbia wasn't carrying its 15 metres long robot arm and camera, so its crew was unable to inspect the damage.

NASA officials though say it's not unusual for debris to fly off during launch. It was the second time in four months that a piece of fuel-tank foam had come off. In October, Atlantis lost a piece of foam during lift off in an incident also described as superficial.

John Shovelan at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston for AM.