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News stories from April, 2004

STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Thursday, April 01, 2004
Source: NASA Office of Inspector General

NASA OIG: Final Report on Internal Controls Over Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) Costs

Download Full Report (PDF)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Office of Inspector General
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Reply to Attn of: W
March 16, 2004
 

TO: A/Special Assistant to the Administrator
D/Chief Engineer
M/Associate Administrator for Space Flight
O/Assistant Administrator for Institutional and Corporate Management
Q/Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance
LaRC/A/Center Director
 

FROM: W/Assistant Inspector General for Auditing

SUBJECT: Final Report on Internal Controls Over Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) Costs (Report Number IG-04-013)

We conducted this audit to determine whether the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) established controls to ensure that 1) expenditures were reasonable, necessary, and properly accounted for and 2) goods and services were acquired in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). As of September 30, 2003, CAIB costs, which were funded through NASA's appropriation, totaled $16.9 million.

To accomplish our objectives we identified and assessed CAIB processes for controlling expenditures and ensuring goods and services were acquired in accordance with FAR. We also reviewed documentation supporting procurement actions and other expenditures totaling $9.1 million.

We concluded that within 2 months of beginning operations, the CAIB Executive Secretary for Management established effective processes for controlling expenditures and ensuring contracts were in accordance with FAR. Although our review of procurement actions and other expenditures led us to question payments totaling $215,215 (2.4 percent of those reviewed), we conclude that they occurred for unique reasons and did not represent systemic weaknesses in controls. We are, however, recommending that NASA seek a voluntary refund of $30,563 for an overpayment to the CAIB's primary support contractor.

The Executive Secretary's accomplishment in establishing and implementing effective internal controls reflects positively on the quality and commitment of the CAIB's support staff. This accomplishment is noteworthy given that the CAIB was established on the day of the Columbia accident, and it began its work without a pre-established framework for controlling its financial and procurement activities. We believe that NASA can use the experience of the CAIB support staff to improve its process for establishing and conducting major mishap investigation boards. To that end, we are recommending that NASA revise the Contingency Action Plan for Space Flight Operations to include a framework for establishing a support staff and ensuring that necessary financial and procurement controls are implemented upon the initiation of a major mishap board. The enclosure contains details on the scope, methodology, findings and recommendations of our audit. NASA management has agreed to action that is responsive to our findings and recommendations. We will follow up to determine if the actions have been completed. If you have any questions please contact me at 358-2572.

[Original signed by]

David M. Cushing

Enclosure
Audit Report on Columbia Accident Investigation Board Financial and Procurement Management

cc:
A/Administrator
B/Chief Financial Officer
C/Director
G/General Counsel
Q/Associate Administrator
M-2/Audit Liaison Representative
OJD/Director, Management Systems Division
JSC/Center Director
KSC/Center Director
LaRC/Branch Head, Supply and Simplified Acquisition Branch, Office of Procurement
JSC/BD5/Audit Liaison Representative KSC/QA-D/ Audit Liaison Representative
LaRC/R/Audit Liaison Representative

Download Full Report (PDF)


News stories from March, 2004

 


News stories from February, 2004

 


News stories from January, 2004

Columbia's Final Minutes
The second-by-second account of the shuttle's last minutes

By Michael Cabbage and William Harwood
January 27, 2004

EDITOR'S NOTE: From "Comm Check ... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia," by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood, which is being published Tuesday by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. Cabbage is the space editor of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel; Harwood is a veteran space reporter for CBS News. Printed by permission.

"The most complicated machine ever built got knocked out of the sky by a pound and a half of foam. I don't know how any of us could have seen that coming. The message that sends me is, we are walking the razor's edge. This is a dangerous business and it does not take much to knock you off."

-- Flight director Paul Hill

Shuttle wings are made of aluminum, the upper and lower surfaces separated by spars and trusses that form a boxlike internal framework. The main landing gear wheel well boxes are located toward the front of each wing, nestled up against the side of the orbiter's fuselage just behind the leading edge.

Behind its protective insulation, the front of a shuttle wing is flat, made up of a panel of aluminum honeycomb material known as the leading edge spar. To give the wing its aerodynamic shape, and to protect it from the most extreme temperatures of re-entry, 22 reinforced-carbon carbon panels are bolted side by side on that flat front surface, creating a smoothly curving leading edge. So-called spanner beams, made out of a heat-resistant alloy called Inconel, provide rigidity. To seal the gaps between RCC panels, thin carbon-composite strips called T-seals are bolted in place to provide a smooth surface along the entire leading edge.

During re-entry, the shuttle's nose is pitched up 40 degrees, which subjects the lower halves of the RCC panels to the most extreme heating. The fittings used to attach the RCC panels to the main spar are protected by heat-resistant insulation that melts at 3,200 degrees.

Whatever happened to Columbia had utterly destroyed this complex system.

Twenty-seven truckloads of wreckage were hauled to Kennedy Space Center between Feb. 5 and May 6. More than 25,000 searchers, who scoured a debris "footprint" that was 645 miles long, found 84,900 individual pieces, about 38 percent of the space shuttle. Each piece or component was cleaned, decontaminated, bar-coded, photographed and entered into a computer database. Wreckage from Columbia's wings, fuselage, and nose section was laid out on a grid in the Reusable Launch Vehicle Hangar near Kennedy's shuttle runway. The most critical RCC panels and attachment fittings -- those numbered 1 through 13 and nearest the fuselage -- were mounted on a full-scale clear plastic mockup of the rounded leading edge that allowed investigators to see each piece in relationship to its neighbors. It also allowed them to map out exactly where the heat went after it entered the leading edge.

The work at KSC was buttressed by analysis by Johnson Space Center engineers of data from the orbiter's Modular Auxiliary Data System, or MADS, recorder and amateur video images of Columbia's disintegration. The inch-wide MADS tape contained information from 570 sensors; it was found by searchers in Hemphill, Texas, on March 19, six weeks after Columbia disintegrated. Ultimately, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was able to conclude, without qualification, that the foam impact was the root cause of the accident; that the impact had knocked a 6- to 10-inch hole in the lower half of RCC panel 8 on the shuttle's left wing; and that a plume of super-heated plasma entering through that breach had destroyed the wing and triggered the destruction of the orbiter.

The team concluded the foam broke away from the left bipod ramp 81.7 seconds after liftoff and hit the underside of Columbia's left wing two-tenths of a second later. The foam measured 21 to 27 inches long by 12 to 18 inches wide. It was tumbling at 18 revolutions per second. Before the foam separated, the shuttle -- and the foam -- had a velocity of 1,568 mph, about twice the speed of sound. Because of its low density, the foam rapidly decelerated once in the airstream, slowing by 550 mph in that two-tenths of a second. The foam didn't fall on to the leading edge of the left wing as much as the shuttle ran into it from below. The relative speed of the collision was more than 500 mph, delivering more than a ton of force.

On July 7, investigators using a nitrogen-powered cannon fired a 1,200-cubic-inch block of foam weighing 1.67 pounds at RCC panel 8, taken from the shuttle Atlantis. Traveling at 530 mph, the foam blew a ragged 16-inch hole in the RCC panel, vividly demonstrating how much damage foam could do.

***

With the dramatic foam shot at RCC panel 8, all the pieces of the puzzle were finally in place. There was little doubt about what had doomed Columbia and its crew. A second-by-second time line of the final working scenario provided a gripping account of the shuttle's final minutes.

At 8:44:09 a.m. Eastern time on Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia was a half-hour from home. The shuttle had just dropped below an altitude of 76 miles, slipping into the discernible atmosphere 900 miles northwest of Honolulu.

During re-entry, the shuttle compresses the thin air in front of it, creating two shock waves. Those shock waves intersect around RCC panel 9, subjecting panels in that area to the most extreme heating. But the compression of the air in front of the shuttle forms a so-called boundary layer, a region just a few inches thick that resists further compression and acts as a natural insulator. A few inches away from the leading edge, just beyond the boundary layer, molecules are torn apart and temperatures can exceed 10,000 degrees. But the boundary layer keeps temperatures on the leading edge RCC panels at around 3,000 degrees.

A smooth surface is essential for the boundary layer to form and is crucial to a shuttle's survival during the plunge to Earth. If the boundary layer is disturbed for any reason, its insulating effect can be compromised by high-temperature turbulence, subjecting the shuttle's tiles and RCC panels to much more heat than they were designed to handle.

But even as the Columbia astronauts chatted about the light show outside, the hole in Columbia's left wing was disrupting that boundary layer. Ever more air molecules were shooting into the inside of the wing at RCC panel 8 and slamming into the insulation protecting the panel attachment fittings, swirling through the cavity and spreading out to either side. At that altitude, the effect was small. But the shuttle was descending, and the air was getting thicker with each passing second. With Columbia in a 40-degree nose-up orientation, the plume entering the breach in RCC panel 8 was aimed at the upper attachment fittings and insulation. The insulation began melting, and the front face of the left wing's aluminum honeycomb forward spar -- the only barrier between the plume and the interior of the wing -- began heating up.

At 8:48:39 a.m., just four minutes and 30 seconds after Columbia had dipped into the atmosphere, a sensor mounted behind the forward spar, near the point where RCC panel 9 was bolted to the other side, measured an unusual increase in stress. The spar was softening.

About a minute later -- five and a half minutes after entry interface -- the shuttle's flight computers ordered a turn to the right. Up until this point, the shuttle had simply been falling into the atmosphere, wings level, nose up and pointed straight ahead. Now, the ship's flight computers began actively guiding the shuttle toward Kennedy's runway. The shuttle's nose smoothly swung 80 degrees to the right.

Less than 20 seconds after the maneuver, sensors mounted on Columbia's left rear rocket pod measured an unusual change in temperature. Wind tunnel testing would later show some of the hot air blasting into the RCC cavity was exiting through the vents on the upper surface of the wing, carrying thin clouds of metallic vapor from melted insulation.

The firestorm inside the RCC cavity was rapidly increasing in intensity. The boundary layer around the leading edge breach was severely disrupted, and the flow of super-heated air over the lower surface of the wing exposed the protective tiles there to much higher temperatures than they were designed to withstand. Insulation and RCC panel support fittings behind the breach continued to burn away.

Within a few seconds of 8:52:16 a.m. -- the exact time is unknown -- the deadly plume burned its way through the forward wing spar and into the interior of the wing.

The shuttle was still 300 miles from the coast of California. The crew still had no idea anything was wrong.

But with the boundary layer disrupted, the temperature of the atoms and molecules blasting into the wing probably exceeded 8,000 degrees near the leading edge breach itself. Hot gas began flowing into the wheel well through vents around landing gear door hinges. At 8:52:17 a.m., the first unusual sensor reading flashed on a computer screen in mission control: a slight increase in temperature in the hydraulic fluid running through a brake line leading to the left main landing gear.

Columbia's left wing was burning up from the inside out. Twelve seconds after the brake line temperature reading showed up in mission control, the shuttle's flight computers noticed the effects of the damage for the first time as a force, or drag, began pulling the shuttle's nose to the left. After assessing the data for a few seconds, the computers sent commands to the wing flaps, or elevons, on both wings to push the shuttle's nose slightly to the right to balance it out.

On the flight deck, shuttle commander Rick Husband and rookie pilot William "Willie" McCool remained oblivious to their ship's ongoing destruction. They might have noticed the elevon movement on their forward computer displays, but the adjustments were small and would not have caused concern.

Columbia finally crossed the coast of California north of San Francisco at 8:53:28 a.m. at an altitude of 45 miles and a velocity of 15,800 mph. By then, the orbiter was in severe distress.

Scores of amateur shuttle watchers in California and Nevada had gotten up before dawn to watch Columbia's fiery descent. Even first-time observers were struck by the appearance of the shuttle's plasma trail. The super-heated air left in the shuttle's wake glowed in the dark sky like a phosphorescent contrail.

The plume shooting into the wing from the front spar breach may have burned a hole through the upper skin of the wing during this period, perhaps at the same time that many observers on the ground saw a bright flash.

By 8:54 a.m., just 32 seconds after Columbia had crossed the coast -- and just a minute and 44 seconds after the forward spar had been breached -- the outboard wall of the left main landing gear wheel well began melting. A scant 11 seconds after that, the shuttle's flight computers detected another change in the way Columbia's flight path was being affected.

It was as if the left wing had suddenly gained additional lift. The flight computers instantly responded, adjusting Columbia's elevons yet again to exactly counteract the two unwanted motions.

The shuttle stayed on course. Husband and McCool may have noticed the elevon movements as the autopilot responded, but again, they made no attempt to contact mission control for an explanation. In all likelihood, they still believed the entry was proceeding normally.

The increased lift initially puzzled investigators until they pieced together the plume's path through the wing's interior. The melting of the support spars and trusses just behind the forward spar caused the upper and lower wing surfaces to lose their rigidity. The lower wing, which was directly affected by the increasing pressure of the air, bowed inward, forming a depression. It started out small, but as the seconds ticked by and the wing's interior got even hotter, it grew alarmingly. Over the next five minutes, the depression probably grew to some 20 feet in length and 4 feet in width, a concave area more than 5 inches deep. Wind-tunnel testing and computer simulations later showed such a depression could explain the reaction of Columbia's flight computers.

In mission control, the first clear sign of a problem aboard Columbia was the loss of data from sensors in the left wing's hydraulic system. The wires leading to those sensors had been part of a cable bundle attached to the outboard wall of the left landing gear wheel well.

As Columbia was crossing the border between California and Nevada, the shuttle's attitude was down to 43.1 miles. But its velocity was still a blistering 22.5 times the speed of sound. It was 8:54:25 a.m.

Observers on the ground saw or photographed more than 10 debris-shedding events in the next few moments.

At 8:58:03 a.m., Columbia's flight computers detected a sharp change in the aerodynamic forces acting on the shuttle as the depression in the lower surface of the left wing presumably increased in size. At the same time, the drag acting to pull the nose farther to the left continued to increase. Approaching the Texas border, the flight computers again ordered the elevons to counteract the unwanted forces. Several debris-shedding events, indicating the wing was losing additional insulation and structure, were noticed by ground observers.

Months later, Air Force Lt. Col. Pat Goodman, a CAIB investigator, speculated the sudden change in the shuttle's flying characteristics was caused by a major change in the wing's shape. "I believe you can make a case ... that the wing begins to collapse," Goodman said. But the crew still would not have noticed any dramatic change.

They did, however, notice the loss of tire pressure data. The computers triggered an alarm in the cockpit and displayed a message to alert Husband to possible problems with the landing gear. This was the crew's first notification of potential trouble. Husband called mission control, presumably to report the message -- "And, uh, Hou ... " but his transmission was cut off.

Astronaut Charles Hobaugh, sitting to Cain's immediate right, radioed Columbia to let Husband know the flight control team was aware of the alarm and the lost tire data. He added, "And we did not copy your last" to let Husband know he needed to repeat whatever he had been trying to say earlier.

By now, the drag and roll forces acting on Columbia were beginning to reach the point where the elevons could no longer keep the shuttle properly oriented. In seconds, they would reach the limit of their motion.

Husband, perhaps beginning to realize major problems were developing, heard Hobaugh's call and tried to respond.

"Roger, uh, buh ... " It was 8:59:32 a.m. and Columbia was approaching Dallas. Seconds earlier, data from the shuttle suddenly froze on the computer screens in mission control. Down arrows or the letter S, for "static," had appeared on the screens, indicating the numbers were no longer being updated. As it turned out, data were, in fact, still flowing down from Columbia. The signals were garbled, however, and the computers in mission control were programmed not to display potentially corrupted information. Investigators later would be able to extract some of the data. That information, combined with readings stored in the MADS recorder, and analysis of recovered wreckage, eventually allowed investigators to develop a rough time line of events stretching another one minute and 50 seconds beyond Husband's final transmission.

For the astronauts, the final sequence was mercifully brief, but no doubt terrifying.

The left wing had suffered so much damage by now that nothing could be done to keep the nose pointed in the right direction. First two and then four right-side rocket thrusters were automatically commanded to fire in a futile bid to offset the forces pulling the nose to the left. A master alarm sounded in the cockpit as the elevon control circuitry failed. Columbia's nose yawed farther to the left, toward Earth, as the spacecraft began rolling to its right.

In all likelihood, all or part of the presumably collapsed wing suddenly folded over and broke off. At 8:59:46 a.m., a large piece of debris was seen separating from the shuttle. Columbia's backup flight system computer began generating a string of fault messages. Two more large pieces of debris fell away from the shuttle within two seconds of each other starting at 9:00:01 a.m. One of these may have been the shuttle's vertical tail fin ripping off in the hypersonic airstream. The other could have been a large piece of the left-side rocket pod. No one knows.

"Everything just wants to fall over at that point," Cain said. "Because again, this is just like a barn door in wind. If that wing came off as we were falling -- pitching down and falling over ... it is likely that the vehicle then probably broke apart in mid-body area." But not immediately.

At 9:00:02 a.m., two seconds of relatively clean data reached the ground, providing a snapshot of Columbia's condition at that moment.

Columbia's three hydraulic power units were still running, along with the ship's three electrical generators. The main engine compartment was intact, and the communications and navigation equipment in the crew module were functioning normally. The shuttle's life support systems were operational. Air pressure was stable, and the temperature was a comfortable 71.6 degrees.

But all three hydraulic power units had lost pressure, and the ship's reservoirs of hydraulic fluid were empty. The shuttle's cooling system had shut down. Multiple alarm messages intended to alert the crew to problems were being generated by the computer system. Extreme temperatures were being recorded by sensors on the belly of the orbiter and along the left side of the fuselage. The electrical system was showing signs of multiple shorts.

As of 9:00:04 a.m., when the final two seconds of telemetry ended, the fuselage was still intact, along with the right wing and the right rear rocket pod. All or part of the left wing was gone. The condition of the vertical tail fin was unknown.

Just before telemetry stopped, data from the backup flight system computer indicated one of the two cockpit "joysticks," used to manually fly the spacecraft on final approach to the runway, was moved beyond its normal position. That's one way for a pilot to deactivate the autopilot. But investigators do not believe Husband or McCool was attempting to take over manual control. More likely, one of the pilots inadvertently bumped his hand controller during those horrifying final few seconds. The shuttle's digital autopilot remained engaged through the final loss of signal.

Finally, at 9:00:19 a.m., the fuselage began breaking apart. The shuttle was 37 miles up and still traveling 18 times the speed of sound.

A study done for the CAIB concluded the shuttle's heavily reinforced crew module and nose section broke away from the fuselage relatively intact, separating at the bulkhead that marks the dividing line between the cargo bay and the forward fuselage.

Challenger's crew module had also broken away in one piece when the shuttle disintegrated during launch 17 years earlier. As with Challenger, the forces acting on Columbia's crew during this period were not violent enough to cause injury, and investigators believe the astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of the orbiter.

Like Challenger's crew, the Columbia astronauts met their fates alone and the details will never be known. Clark presumably was still videotaping on the flight deck when the alarms began blaring and the shuttle yawed out of control. But the outer portions of the tape -- the portions that might have shown at least the initial moments of the shuttle's destruction -- were burned away.

Investigators concluded the module fell intact for 38 seconds after main vehicle breakup, plunging 60,000 feet to an altitude of 26 miles before it began to disintegrate from the combined effects of aerodynamic stress and extreme temperatures. From the debris analysis, investigators believe the module was probably destroyed over a 24-second period beginning at 9:00:58 a.m. During that period, the module fell another 35,000 feet, to an altitude of 19 miles or so.

Investigators believe the module began breaking up at the beginning of that window. If any of the astronauts were still alive at that point, death would have been instantaneous, the result of blunt force trauma, including hypersonic wind blast, and lack of oxygen. About 45 percent of the crew module was recovered near Hemphill, Texas, including pieces of the forward and aft main bulkheads, the frames from the forward cockpit windows, the crew airlock, and all of the hatches. About three-quarters of the flight deck instrument panels were found, along with 80 percent of the mid-deck floor panels and numerous parts from the crew's seats and attached safety equipment. From an analysis of pressure suit components and helmets, investigators concluded three astronauts had not yet donned their gloves when breakup began and one was not wearing his or her helmet. In the end, however, having sealed pressure suits would have made no difference.

But investigators were struck by the way the crew modules of both Challenger and Columbia broke away relatively intact. The survivability study concluded relatively modest design changes might enable future crews to survive long enough to bail out.

But Columbia's crew had no chance. The astronauts fell to Earth amid a cloud of wreckage and debris.

One of the crew members came to rest beside a country road near Hemphill. The remains were found by a 59-year-old chemical engineer and Vietnam veteran named Roger Coday, who called the sheriff and then watched from the porch of his mobile home as a funeral director drove by to collect them.

"The astronauts have always been my heroes," said Coday, who that afternoon fashioned a cross out of two cedar logs he had cut earlier and erected it at the place where the astronaut had fallen to Earth.

"It's there and we still maintain it," he said eight months after the disaster, still wondering who the astronaut was. "I am a very devout Christian, and I prayed for that person's soul."

COPYRIGHT © 2004 BY MICHAEL CABBAGE AND WILLIAM HARWOOD


Part of Columbia astronaut's diary found in Texas

January 26, 2004

HOUSTON (AP) — Sections of a diary belonging to one of the seven astronauts killed last year when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas were found a few months ago and returned to his family, according to a published report.

The Jerusalem Post reported that sections of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon's diary were found in a Texas field with other debris.

The diary was submitted to the Israel Police for help in deciphering what was written, since the pages were written in Hebrew and some of the pages were full of holes, the newspaper reported.

Johnson Space Center spokesman James Hartsfield confirmed on Friday that any personal items found among the debris were returned to the astronauts' families.

"Out of respect for the privacy of the families we will not identify those items," he said.

A woman who answered the phone Friday at the Houston home of Ramon's widow said Rona Ramon didn't want to comment.

Columbia broke apart as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1 after searing gases penetrated a gash in a wing. NASA doesn't expect to launch another shuttle until next fall at the earliest.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


News stories from December, 2003

BUTTERFLY ON A BULLET
Exhuming Columbia, one piece at a time
* Early investigators had to rely on informed guesswork. But clues were puring in.

December 23, 2003

By Robert Lee Hotz, Times Staff Writer

By the Milk River on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, Chauncy Birdtail woke up the day Columbia crashed the way he did most mornings — worried.

As a part-time firefighter, Birdtail, 26, spent too many weeks in smoldering mountain wastes far from his wife and three children.

Like many members of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes, he struggled for steady work. To make ends meet, he had a part-time job filling in for an elementary school janitor.

Now his wife was pregnant again. He also faced an overdue drunk-driving fine and had no idea how to earn the $900 to pay it off.

The space shuttle was the furthest thing from his mind.

Then the U.S. Forest Service put out a call for firefighters to join the search for debris.

Birdtail hesitated. If he stayed behind, there was still a chance he could make his janitor's job into something full time.

On the other hand, he needed that $900. The Forest Service was paying $11.64 an hour. There was no way he could earn that kind of money at home.

Birdtail said goodbye to his family one more time and, like thousands of others, joined the search for Columbia.

Investigators were anxious to find recorders, cameras and computers, anything with a memory, especially the craft's most precious electronic repository — its flight data recorder.

The FBI, the National Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board all joined NASA at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., within hours of the accident, then fanned into counties in East Texas and Louisiana.

Searchers slashed through lowland thickets of 2-inch thorns, hoping luck would lead them to anything that could further the investigation.

One morning, NASA recovery operations chief David Whittle looked up from his desk at Barksdale and realized that 5,600 people were under his authority for the day, searching for wreckage in an area almost the size of Connecticut.

To quicken the recovery of debris, Whittle pressed into service two satellites, a U-2 surveillance aircraft, 37 helicopters and seven other airplanes. He tried to hire a blimp. He quickly learned that the debris was too small to be seen from the air, the vegetation too thick.

People had to search on foot.

Chauncy Birdtail and other recruits walked in rows 10 feet apart. They shook debris from trees, tore it free of thorn thickets. They dug it up from golf courses, swept it from schoolyards and pried it off the windshields of cars.

At the murky bottom of Toledo Bend Lake, along the border between Texas and Louisiana, 60 divers felt among the submerged tree stumps. They made more than 3,300 dives. They found no debris.

When searchers came across a fragment, they marked its position with a flag.

"You got to holler out when you find what you think is a shuttle piece," Birdtail said.

They noted the location of each possible specimen of human flesh with a pink ribbon.

Every new find was logged with its GPS coordinates. Searchers tested all pieces for toxic chemicals and fumes, then sealed them in plastic sandwich bags at the rate of 1,000 pieces a day.

In three weeks of searching, Birdtail had found a shuttle circuit board, a gasket seal, a scrap of insulation and a piece of the fuselage the size of a storm door.

After a 12-hour day in the field, he and his crew would return to their camp tents. In the evening, NASA workers showed them videos about the space shuttle or handed out bumper stickers and souvenir pins.

When days passed without an additional discovery, the contract firefighter got depressed.

"You push and push. I was really in the downs because I didn't have no finds," Birdtail said. "The copperheads would chase you. You see a water moccasin every day. I was just wanting to go home."

One evening, an astronaut came by to talk with the firefighters about the life in the sky.

Birdtail had a question for the first astronaut he had ever seen: How much do you get paid?

The astronaut instead pointed out a moving spark in the sky.

"I will show you Alpha," she said. It was the International Space Station passing overhead.

"It looked like a big, bright old star," Birdtail said, "but it was moving so fast, not like a comet or nothing, but at its own little speed. That was cool."

The men and women in the blue flight suits seemed to materialize from the debris itself.

Whittle had not expected NASA astronauts themselves to commandeer the search for human remains.

"I'm not sure who gave them authority to do that," Whittle said. "It wasn't according to plan…. The crew like to take care of their own."

When a crucial piece of wreckage was discovered, an astronaut frequently would ferry it personally to a laboratory for analysis, as if no one else could be trusted with its care.

In time, every major technical meeting or public hearing had one or more astronauts in attendance. They seemed to offer themselves as living reminders of what had been lost and, perhaps, in atonement for survivor's guilt.

As indentured servants of spaceflight, NASA's astronauts were both powerful and powerless.

The lives at stake were theirs, and they risked them willingly. But if they raised too many questions, they risked losing their only chance to fly in space, or possibly killing the shuttle program itself.

Adding to the pressure, the space agency routinely hired and trained far more astronauts than could ever be accommodated on scheduled shuttle flights, the agency's inspector general reported earlier this year.

Consequently, astronauts now waited years longer than their predecessors for a shuttle flight. In the interim, they trained, handled engineering jobs and performed public relations functions.

In public, they were careful to display all the scripted spontaneity of Disneyland tour guides. About five a year resigned.

During the recovery operation, the astronauts took charge of everything the Columbia crew had touched, worn or used during the mission, including the twisted wreckage of the compartment that had sheltered them.

They sequestered the crew module wreckage in a locked corner of the reconstruction hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Most accident investigators were refused access. Computer files containing information about the module were encrypted. Photographs of the wreckage were locked away or kept on secure computers.

In all, searchers recovered about half of the crew module, according to the agency's internal reports.

It had been ripped apart by aerodynamic stress over about a half a minute — "tormented," one investigator said.

NASA launched an internal investigation of the crew wreckage and, for a time, kept it secret from everyone else involved in the reconstruction effort and the independent accident investigation.

No one would say whether the special handling of crew-related debris was driven by a sense of delicacy or shame.

Lacking comprehensive data from Columbia's onboard electronics, NASA accident investigators in February and early March had to rely on engineering intuition and technical analysis — informed guesswork.

Investigators were intrigued by a blurred image of the shuttle taken by two off-duty Air Force officers at the Starfire Optical Range in Albuquerque.

A volunteer — Julian Christou, a research specialist at the Center for Adaptive Optics at UC Santa Cruz — sharpened the picture through days of intensive computerized image enhancement, using techniques developed to clarify images of distant galaxies.

Even with his best efforts, the image of Columbia remained a smudge, but it revealed signs of an unusual disturbance around the leading edge of the left wing. It could have been caused by a crack, a dent or a tear in its skin.

Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center looked at the data and wondered how that could match the only clues they had to work with: Columbia's last seconds of telemetry signals transmitted to Mission Control in Houston.

The signals showed four failing sensors in the wheel well and abnormal temperature readings from two sensors along the back of the left fuselage.

What damage near the front of the craft would cause a flow pattern that would affect temperatures at the rear?

"Whatever that damage was, it was moving the flow field around," said aerodynamics expert Bill Scallion, who has been with NASA since it was founded. "You get a tremendous amount of heating when you come in at 25,000 feet a second."

They tested their ideas with scale models of the shuttle in Langley's hypersonic wind tunnels among the groves of pin oak and pine outside Hampton, Va.

A team led by Thomas Horvath, an expert in aero-heating and hypersonic flight, used a ceramic model constructed for the Challenger investigation 17 years before.

The model was coated with a temperature-sensitive phosphor that glowed in different hues when heated. By tracing the shifting bands of color, they could map the heat enveloping the spacecraft.

They quickly made 70 such models.

To simulate a damaged tile, they cut out a tiny piece of tape and, using tweezers and a magnifying glass, fastened it to the model wing.

They put the tape in a different spot along the leading edge of the left wing on each model.

To imitate the effect of a damaged wheel well, they also poked a tiny dimple in the wing.

For two weeks, they tested their 70 creations at up to 18 times the speed of sound, using infrared cameras to reveal the flowing currents of heat.

They discovered that by positioning the tape near the middle of the wing's front edge, they could divert the thermal currents across the fuselage in a way that mimicked the sensor readings.

The accident had revealed a secret.

Homesick and scared, Chauncy Birdtail was running from a water moccasin when he saw a black box 20 feet away, cushioned in the damp carpet of pine needles.

He caught his breath.

"I thought it might be a microwave or a piece of a refrigerator," Birdtail recalled, "but it was the wrong color. I was so excited it brought me out of the snake shivers."

He scrambled toward it.

It was about an hour after lunch, about seven miles from Hemphill, Texas, 46 days after the accident.

Weighed down by search gear, Birdtail found it hard to move quickly. He had on a hard hat, goggles, a red backpack, a yellow Nomex shirt and green Nomex pants layered over by chain-saw chaps designed to blunt the briars.

Birdtail had seen nothing like this before. He was afraid to touch it.

The 58-pound black case was about the size of two videocassette recorders. Its top had cracked. He could see circuit boards and loops of magnetic tape.

His crew mates saw it and started shouting.

When the NASA supervisor showed up and located its serial number, he immediately radioed headquarters at Barksdale.

Birdtail had found the flight data recorder — the piece of wreckage at the top of NASA's search list.

The 22-year-old instrument, known officially as the Orbiter Experiment recorder, held all the information from the shuttle's sensors, readings on the ship's temperatures, pressures and other data during ascent and reentry.

All of that data spooled onto 9,200 feet of 1-inch tape on two reels the size of medium pizzas.

The recorder had been housed under a crew seat, its data to be downloaded only after landing.

"Our jaws dropped when we saw it," said John Hunt, a senior avionics expert at the United Space Alliance, which runs shuttle operations for NASA.

Inside the case, the tape had unwound in a tangle around the capstans and twisted against the recording heads. The impact had nicked and pinched it into a hundred folds, then stretched it into a fragile thread.

All of it was waterlogged.

An astronaut flew the box to Houston for inspection and then to Minnesota for cleaning and repair.

It was the most direct memory of the shuttle's last flight that investigators would find.

"There it was," Birdtail said, "some answers, anyway, for the astronauts … what happened to them while they was riding home."

"My tear things on my eyes started juicing. I was thinking these space people probably need to find out how they died. I was feeling all that for them."


Shuttles Will Return to Flight Upgraded With Added Technology

Wednesday December 24, 2004
9:19 AM EST

SPACE.com

 

By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
Cape Canaveral Bureau, SPACE.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- When the next space shuttle lifts off, perhaps as early as September, an upgraded model of the decades-old spaceship will be doing the flying.

Packed full of additional technology intended to make the astronauts safer, most of the improvements won't be obvious when you watch the launch on television.

"The space shuttle won't look any different than what you remember it from the last time it flew," said NASA (news - websites) spokesman Kyle Herring.

"It's like if you have work done on your car's engine. Your car won't look any different. But if you open the hood, all of a sudden you will see some changes," Herring said.

Those changes will be included as the direct result of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report, released in August, which detailed 15 recommendations NASA must do before resuming shuttle flights. Another 14 must be adopted as soon as possible.

A recent analysis showed that the changes will cost NASA an additional $280 million.

Chief among those: incorporating the ability to detect damage to the shuttle's heat protection system of tiles and reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) material and then repair that damage while still in space.

Another major task: redesigning the shuttle's external tank so large chunks of insulating foam won't fall and threaten the shuttle's heat shield in the manner that led to the Columbia tragedy in February.

A chunk of insulating foam fell from Columbia's external tank and struck the left wing during its Jan. 16 launch, breaking open a hole that allowed hot gases to enter the wing during re-entry on Feb. 1, triggering the disaster.

And while the CAIB report cited many cultural issues within NASA management as contributing to the tragedy, it's the technical fixes that will be more quickly introduced to the shuttle program.

"The Administrator's minced no words that we will respond to and meet every recommendation of the CAIB report," Herring said. "There is some flexibility there in how you meet them, but they will be met before we fly."

Expect these changes to the shuttle system when Atlantis or Discovery flies the STS-114 mission to the International Space Station (news - websites) in late 2004:

Leading Edge Sensors

Although not a requirement for return to flight, officials are planning to add some two dozen sensors to the area behind the shuttle's wing leading edges.

The sensors will be able to detect the force -- no matter how small or large -- of any object striking the wing during the mission and radio that information to Mission Control as it happens.

"That will provide basically near real-time data to tell us if anything has hit the orbiter," Herring said.

If a sensor picks up a hit of some kind then mission managers will be able to tell the astronauts where to look to survey any possible damage to the RCC composite material that protects the wing and the shuttle's nose from the hottest temperatures of re-entry.

Officials hope that the sensor system can be proven reliable enough that the need to do in-space inspections with cameras and lasers won't be required some day -- saving valuable time on the flight plan and weight for other cargo.

The sensors are not new technology, and similar devices have been flown in space before, but this would be the first time the instrumentation will be used in this location.

"That's all being developed and although it's not a requirement for return to flight, we really are optimistic it's going to be there," Herring said.

Rocketcam View

Mission managers wanting to see any damage inflicted on the shuttle's heat shield during launch will be aided by a set of rocketcams that will be bolted to the external tank and pointed at key areas of the spaceplane.

"Essentially they'll be able to show us a more close up and personal view of the orbiter from the outside that we ever had before," Herring said.

Rocketcams have become increasingly popular during the past couple of years, beaming down live views of a launch from the perspective of the rocket. More common on unmanned launchers, a single rocketcam was employed during an October 2002 shuttle mission.

A rear-facing camera on the tank of a shuttle Atlantis launch provided a dramatic and unprecedented view of the 18-story vehicle climbing toward space. The only hiccup came at solid rocket booster separation when the camera lens was obscured by exhaust from the motors that push the boosters away.

Officials plan to change the rocketcam locations to avoid repeating that problem, which has serendipitously provided a better view of the shuttle, Herring said.

Space Heater

Although still a small change, the replacement of insulating foam with heaters on the shuttle's external tank will provide a visual clue to the keenest of observers that something is different.

Known as the "bipod ramp" area, the original block of hand-shaved insulating foam meant to prevent ice buildup at that location will be replaced by electric heaters. It was a chunk of foam from this ramp that triggered the Columbia tragedy.

While the hardware design is approved, engineers have yet to fully study how the fix will change the aerodynamics of the tank during launch.

Officials say they don't have any worries, but have decided to take the time and effort of building a new scale model of the shuttle for conducting wind tunnel tests early next summer.

The same effort was done during the 1970s, and although the model used then was retrieved from storage and dusted off, engineers chose to construct a new model that more faithfully represented the current configuration.

"It was proven that that approach was very successful in modeling aerodynamic flows, thermal, all of the aspects of an ascent profile," Herring said.

Once finalized and completely approved, the design will be incorporated on all future tanks. Several tanks that now are in storage in the Vehicle Assembly Building eventually will be refurbished and modified with the same fix.

Boom Town

The ability to inspect in space almost every square inch of the shuttle will be made possible with the use of a 50-foot-long extension, or boom, to the shuttle's robot arm.

"It's two segments of a robot arm that are spares that are being connected together, and then a high-tech laser sensor package and camera will be located on the end to basically allow our visual reach to become twice what it is now with the shuttle's robot arm," Herring said.

Getting the boom and laser/camera package, along with the required software, to work together as a system has been something of a challenge. But tests have progressed far enough to prove the sensor package will be able to detect damage.

Herring said this is another example of taking proven technology and finding a new use for it, rather than having to develop or invent some new gadget that could be more costly or add time to the return to flight process.

Ace Repair

How ever the discovery of damage to a shuttle's heat shield is made -- by wing sensor, rocketcam or in-flight inspection -- astronauts on all future missions will be equipped with a repair kit that will allow them to take a spacewalk and solve the problem.

Officials so far have the repair of missing or damaged heat protection tiles fairly well in hand. The process of applying the material works well and has been proven in training runs on aircraft flights that create brief moments of weightlessness.

Herring said the materials have been selected and several companies could be selected as the source -- a decision that is expected to be made in January.

Tougher still is figuring out how to repair the RCC panels that make up the wing leading edge. The composite material is handcrafted, takes months to manufacture and must be shaped for the specific area of the wing it's being used on.

Several promising options are being looked at, and the expectation is that an RCC repair kit will soon be available, Herring said.

But it's not available yet.

The total time remaining before the shuttle flies again could wind up depending on when the RCC repair kit is available.


News stories from November, 2003

November 25, 2003

Pricetag for shuttle fixes: $280 million

By John Kelly
FLORIDA TODAY

CAPE CANAVERAL -- A team of outside experts is investigating whether NASA's inspection program is good enough to make sure the shuttles and external fuel tanks are safe.

The safety reviews at Kennedy Space Center and the Louisiana tank factory were not among the changes demanded by the board that investigated the Feb. 1 Columbia accident.

One of the board's 13 members, U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, urged the studies because he felt the Columbia report did not go far enough to prevent another disaster.

So Monday, NASA released a new version of its plan to get the shuttles back to space. The update outlines dozens of extra actions the agency is taking.

It also estimates NASA will spend at least $280 million in 2003 and 2004 to make the changes ordered by the board. That's the first price cited for shuttle reforms, from fixing the fuel tank foam that doomed Columbia to creating a new safety and engineering center.

NASA officials said the estimates, shown to members of Congress on Friday, were preliminary and do not include the cost of several important and potentially expensive fixes. The estimate is not a request to increase the $3.8 billion-per-year shuttle budget.

"Instead of flying, we're doing research and development to get back to flying," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said. "This is the first jab at estimating the cost of all of that."

The updated return-to-flight plan focuses heavily on activities at Kennedy Space Center, notably the quality control and inspections done while workers ready the shuttles for launch.

Drawing from interviews with more than 200 shuttle workers, the accident board made "observations" about the number and quality of inspections NASA does to double-check work by contractors such as United Space Alliance.

Deal went further. He wrote an add-on chapter to the board's report. In it, he argued the board should have mandated tougher pre-flight inspections before the next launch instead of just noting the concern as an "observation." Deal said the issues he raised needed extra attention to "prevent the next accident from occurring."

NASA responded by assembling experts from the Defense Department, Federal Aviation Administration and private companies to do a "top-to-bottom" review of the inspections process. The group has finished its inquiry and will make recommendations to shuttle managers later this year. NASA did not release details of the team's findings or recommendations.

Also, NASA temporarily made it harder to remove items from the list of components and procedures that must be checked by agency inspectors prior to launch. The number of such "government mandatory inspection points" plummeted over the years as NASA handed over more control of shuttle work to its contractors.

Deal's report made similar recommendations about quality control and inspections at the New Orleans-area plant where the external tanks are built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Deal could not be reached Monday for comment about the NASA plan.

Three specific shuttle system failures that could lead to catastrophe were addressed too, even though they did not cause the Columbia accident. They are:

Metal rings that connect the two solid rocket boosters to the 15-story orange fuel tank might lack the strength to do the job. NASA promised to do tests to make sure the rings are tough enough to withstand 1.4 times the stress they experience during launch. That's always been a rule, but shuttle officials waived the requirement before Columbia's launch.

Failures in the thick posts that hold shuttles to the launch pad could cause a shuttle to break up shortly after liftoff. The posts failed without disastrous results during the launch just before Columbia. But NASA kept flying without redesigning the system. NASA said Monday it will change how the posts are installed and inspected before the next flight.

Salty, corrosive moisture at the shuttles' ocean-front home cause hidden damage to critical parts such heatshield panels that protect the front of orbiter wings. That can lead to the type of fatal heat breach that downed Columbia. Shuttle engineers are studying corrosion concerns, but have not yet identified specific solutions.

Few of those changes are included in the $280 million worth of return to flight costs outlined in the report. That preliminary budget focused on changes already in the works.

The vast majority of those costs are associated with eliminating the problem of foam insulation shedding from the external fuel tank during launch, damaging the shuttle heat shield.

The biggest item by far is the $65 million pegged for redesigning the tank.

Another $44 million is planned for improving ground cameras scattered across the Cape, tracking shuttles as they roar off the pad. Faulty cameras gave engineers blurry or unusable pictures of the debris strike. That left mission managers without critical information for deciding if Columbia was badly damaged and needed emergency help. High-definition television cameras are planned.

Developing ways to inspect and repair heat shield tiles in orbit could cost $57 million. A new safety and engineering center at Langley Research Center in Virginia will cost $45 million.


News stories from October, 2003

Oct 28, 6:25 PM

Cabin resilience may lead to survivability features

By John Kelly
FLORIDA TODAY

Columbia's crew cabin stayed intact longer than the rest of the shuttle, and its condition could help NASA develop ways to increase astronauts' chances of surviving future accidents.

A study included among hundreds of new pages of documents released Tuesday by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said the survival of the Columbia cabin was similar to what happened to the same part of Challenger after that shuttle exploded in 1986.

The work, by a special NASA team formed at the request of the accident investigators, said data from both accidents should be used to investigate crew escape techniques.

Future NASA space vehicles should incorporate the knowledge gained in the Challenger and Columbia accidents "in assessing the feasibility of designing vehicles that will provide for crew survival even in the face of a mishap that results in the loss of the vehicle," the report said.

In releasing the additional documentation, the accident board and NASA stressed the findings and recommendations of individual teams that did work to support the investigation did not reflect the conclusions of the accident board.

In the board's official final report, investigators did not rule on whether NASA should develop a crew-escape system for the remaining space shuttles. Nor did it recommend as a condition of returning the ships to flight that the crew compartment be strengthened to increase the chance of astronauts surviving.

The report did not provide specific details about how the crew died or how long the seven might have survived, only that the compartment was intact for almost a minute longer than the rest of the ship.

In general, the report said the astronauts did not burn to death. They died from suffocation when the cabin did finally rip apart and from the force of colliding with other objects at incredibly high speeds as the wreckage fell to the ground.

The report also recommended future crews be carefully trained to wear all of their protective gear. The forensic review showed three of the seven astronauts were not wearing their gloves and one was not wearing a helmet. The report said, however, that none of that would have increased the astronauts' chances of surviving the Columbia break-up.


Shuttle debris recovery duties fall to KSC
Oct 14, 11:12 PM
By Chris Kridler
FLORIDA TODAY

CAPE CANAVERAL -- The center for recovering shuttle debris moved to Kennedy Space Center this week from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The pieces from Columbia already were moved from a hangar to a storage area in the Vehicle Assembly Building, and NASA is considering several requests to study the debris. As pieces trickle in, they will be sent directly to KSC instead of JSC.

Also, KSC will answer the toll-free phone line people use to report debris, (866) 446-6603. It is illegal for private citizens to keep debris from the orbiter, which disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1. More discoveries are expected as hunting season gets under way in east Texas, in the area of the main debris field.

"Every now and then, we get some pieces that are sent to us," NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said.

In addition, "we're still getting calls from Challenger," he said. "People think they find pieces of Challenger on the beach, and who do they call?"

It's been years since a verified piece of Challenger debris was discovered, he said, though NASA knows where much of the shuttle has settled on the ocean floor. The shuttle exploded after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.

The duties of the Columbia Recovery Office will be handled by existing employees, Buckingham said.


News stories from September, 2003

 NASA readies debris for storage

Some shuttle remains might go to museum

Sep 11, 9:48 PM

By Todd Halvorson

FLORIDA TODAY

CAPE CANAVERAL -- Shuttle Columbia's remains will begin moving to a final resting place next week. But unlike debris from Challenger, some wreckage will be available for scientific research and perhaps public display.

"Be it closure or whatever, it's a good feeling to know we're going to try to keep the legacy of research that Columbia stood for versus sealing her up under concrete," NASA vehicle engineer Scott Thurston said Thursday.

NASA still hasn't decided whether any of the 84,900 pieces of recovered debris ultimately will be given to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. But the institution has first dibs on all excess NASA property.

High-ranking officials at NASA headquarters are conferring with the families of Columbia's seven fallen astronauts on the matter.

"We're trying to comply with their wishes," said Thurston. "We don't want to upset the families. They've undergone a tragedy."

More than 40 tons of Columbia wreckage -- or about 38 percent of the vehicle -- was recovered during three-month search for debris in east Texas and Louisiana. The debris then was trucked to Kennedy Space Center, where it was reconstructed as part of an investigation into the Feb. 1 accident.

Workers on Monday will begin moving the debris to the 16th floor of NASA's 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building from a hangar near the KSC runway.

There, it will be stored in a 6,800-square-foot room where temperatures will be kept at 65 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity levels will be kept at 50 percent. The controlled atmosphere is meant to preserve the debris for researchers.

The move is expected to be complete by Oct. 1.

NASA in June announced its intention to make some of the debris available to researchers. The agency already has received 20 proposals, Thurston said.

Among those interested are engineers working on NASA's planned Orbital Space Plane and university researchers studying next-generation spaceships.

Items drawing the most attention: the shuttle's composite carbon wing panels and thermal tiles, both of which protect the orbiter from intense heat encountered during atmospheric reentry.

A breach in one of Columbia's wing panels -- caused by a chunk of foam insulation that fell off the shuttle's external tank -- allowed hot gasses to trigger the ship's disintegration.

Meanwhile, shuttle program engineers already have obtained crucial shuttle fuel line bearings from Columbia for testing, Thurston said.

Concerns the cracked bearings could break apart and trigger a catastrophic main engine shutdown in flight prompted an extensive engineering analysis before Columbia's Jan. 16 launch.

Debris from the 1986 Challenger explosion was buried in two abandoned Minuteman missile silos at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.


News stories from August, 2003

Foam hitting orbiter nothing new

Concern over 'in-flight anomaly' gradually diminished over 20 years

Aug 26, 9:32 PM

By John Kelly

FLORIDA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- A fateful moment in the shuttle Columbia disaster actually happened months before launch.

In October, a big chunk of foam came off the external tank and struck one of shuttle Atlantis' booster rockets. During the next few weeks, that debris strike came up several times as NASA managers worked to clear Endeavour for its November flight to space station.

Every time before, when big foam chunks had broken free from what's called the bipod area of the fuel tank, NASA treated it as an "in-flight anomaly." That designation prompts a higher level of attention to fixing a problem before the next shuttle flies.

But this time with Atlantis, managers decided the foam debris hit was not an in-flight anomaly. Tank engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center were asked to find out why the foam shed from the tank and propose a fix. But flights could go on.

The change was the culmination of two decades of declining concern about foam debris within the shuttle program, a decision the Columbia Accident Investigation Board identified as "pivotal" to the accident that would occur several months later.

That decision to go ahead with Endeavour's flight and later Columbia's was far from the only bad choice NASA made about the foam debris problem that has plagued the shuttle program since the first launch in 1981.

The accident board "audited" NASA records to identify damage from foam debris on at least 79 of the 113 shuttle flights to date, and larger bipod foam debris on at least seven flights, each time tearing up the delicate heat-shield tiles on the orbiter's belly.

The findings nearly mirror those of Florida Today's own review of more than two decades worth of shuttle documents, which found documentation of foam debris on at least 74 missions.

The board and the newspaper audits discovered NASA made incremental attempts during the years to understand and fix the problem. However, as shuttle after shuttle returned home safely with foam-battered heat shields, NASA gained confidence that it was merely an irritating maintenance problem.

Agency engineers believed strongly that the lightweight foam could not possibly do enough damage to bring down an orbiter. The board said that assumption, and many others about the foam, have been disproved by experiments prompted by the accident.

"The persistent uncertainty about the causes of foam loss and potential orbiter damage results from a lack of thorough hazard analysis and engineering attention," the board's report said.


Columbia lifted imagination

From maiden voyage to tragic end, Columbia always magical

Aug. 26, 2003

By Billy Cox

FLORIDA TODAY

That tight lump in your throat came as a true surprise during the sky-shredding sunrise of April 12, 1981.

The fact that you were spending your birthday at the Kennedy Space Center press site was incidental; you certainly weren't sentimental about getting older, not anymore. In fact, you were in danger of growing cynical about damn near everything.

Disco was still sloshing over the sides of a new decade. Styx, REO Speedwagon and Rush (not Limbaugh) had a hammerlock on the heavy rotation, and if you wanted to hear Lou Reed or The Clash, you had to buy the vinyl. The hits cranking out of John Lennon's "Double Fantasy" album were bleak skips reminding you that the smartest Beatle had been murdered, murdered, murdered.

The Soviets were still in Afghanistan long after we'd punished our own athletes by boycotting the Moscow Olympics. And oh, by the way, this just in: Pope John Paul II has been gunned down in Rome.

Couldn't anyone do anything right?

A few months earlier, America celebrated the release of 53 American hostages from Iran like it was V-J Day, but the sad truth was, they were stranded because Murphy's Law had cooked up a sirocco that left two military rescue aircraft in flames and eight troops dead in a Persian desert. But you didn't have to go to the other side of the world to witness grand-scale futility: Cocoa Beach joined the club when the shoddy Harbour Cay condo tower collapsed on 34 construction workers, killing 11.

The news got so bad that Elton John said he wouldn't live in America's turbulence "if they paid me 100 pounds a minute." From the first homicide ever recorded at Disneyland (an 18-year-old stabbed to death) to an assassination attempt on President Reagan by a lunatic addicted to Martin Scorcese's "Taxi Driver," the repetition of failure created a zone where all expectations were dark.

That was the world Columbia was born into, and escaped from, 22 years ago.

The first time you laid eyes on her was at night, as you drove east along the Bennett Causeway toward Cape Canaveral. She was unsullied and breathtaking, bathed in criss-crossed spotlights on the barrier island like some Hollywood angel, her entire wardrobe, even the external fuel tank, white as that of a virgin bride. She reduced you to a cliche with your very first words: "Oh my god."

Just days before the maiden voyage, pilgrims began arriving in numbers the Civil Defense experts put at somewhere between 500,000 and a million. That seemed absurd, considering Brevard's entire population was 273,000. Yet when you prowled the colonies of campers and vans, amid the aroma of barbecue, they had crowded the riverbanks with such economy, you could picture yourself leaping from roof to roof for a quarter-mile stretch without touching the ground.

The pubs in Cape Canaveral stayed open all night on the eve of the scheduled Friday morning premiere, and Cocoa Beach bartenders geared up with red-white-and-blue Shuttle Shooter specials. It felt like the stories you'd read about during the Mercury/Apollo days. The air was charged with rumors of celebrity sightings: Jerry Brown, Liza Minelli, John Denver, Cab Calloway, Steven Spielberg, Pat Boone, George Lucas, Robert Redford, Neil Armstrong, Nichelle "Lt. Uhura" Nichols.

You weren't sure what to expect last month during a funereal viewing billed as the "Columbia Reconstruction Hangar Walk Through," when 11,000 NASA employees and families were invited to tour the ruins of America's first space shuttle. But you knew you had to go. Because the bird was as much a part of your own history now as Tobacco Road Christmas photos and letters from old girlfriends.

You were flooded by flashbacks as the NASA bus left the KSC Visitor Complex on a hot July morning and made way for the autopsy room inside a hangar optimistically intended for the next generation of space vehicles. Along the way, guide Robert Owler rattled off Columbia's staggering numbers over the microphone:

Twenty-eight missions covering roughly 123 million miles (you did the conversions: the equivalent of more than 200 round trips from Earth to the Moon). A spectacular accident scene 10 miles wide and 280 miles long. Some 84,833 pieces recovered, and yet, just 38 percent of Columbia's dry body weight accounted for. She'd been so thoroughly obliterated, the average piece of debris weighed a little more than a pound.

Owler, a member of the reconstruction team, knew his numbers like preachers know the Scriptures. "For the first few weeks, it was kind of tough on us all," he said. "There are a lot of teardrops on that hangar floor."

Owler said Columbia's remains were laid out on the slab upside down, since her belly was most crucial to investigators. He advised visitors to note the difference between the right and the left wings. There were mental-health counselors on duty, just in case.

You'd already seen the photos, so you knew what to expect. Still, when you stepped into the hangar, the shock was visceral. You never dreamed you'd get within an arm's length of what was once the most complex aircraft ever dispatched into the high frontier. Now that you were here, you couldn't recognize Columbia with a blueprint chart.

The first challenge was optical, the bewilderment of having no focal reference point amid the tediously re-articulated chaos of blasted mid-decks and fuselage paneling and thruster fragments. So your gaze drifted upward, from the morgue floor to the ceiling, gauging the negative composition, the vacuum of what wasn't there.

The second challenge was trying to connect this static exhibition of mangled technology to the atmospheric violence responsible for creating it. You'd seen the replays of Columbia's tumbling fireball a billion times on TV, at different stages, from multiple angles. Here were the results, stark but blank. Proof without comprehension.

You wandered the corridors of the display grid, looking for familiar shapes amid the curiosities. The most prominent item stood, literally, nearly 90 degrees from the floor on its fulcrum. The debris analyst said it was a 16-foot long strip of aluminum from the belly structure. "From what we can tell," he said, "this was found wrapped around a tree."

The landing gear, strut and wheel intact – you recognized those things. Fire extinguisher bottles from the cabin. Another team member deciphered those round balls to the rear as helium tanks, weighing anywhere from 60 to 100 pounds on empty. "We recovered all 34 of them," he said.

The shadow of what Columbia once was began to materialize, vaguely, in clinical increments of explanation and deduction. The payload bay here, the tunnel airlock assembly there. And sure enough, over yonder, the left wing was as sketchy as a mirage, its leading edge of reinforced carbon-carbon panels – designed to withstand temperatures of 2,300 degrees – missing as if devoured.

But it was the cabin window frame, panels 1 through 6 intact, that packed the wallop.

Propped up by boards to face the crowds, honored with an arrangement of roses, the forward frame "looks like goggles," remarked a visitor. This was where you rubbernecked and came to a dead stop, like at a car wreck, compelled by tiny details, the chunks of glass embedded in the sills, the clots of pine straw and dried mud. You could relate to this.

You remembered the beginning, just south of Jetty Park at night, before the launch, tromping through a stand of secretive Australian pines to observe the communion unfurling beneath the Milky Way. To the north stood launch pad 39A, out of sight but scattering an aura of reflected light far above the horizon. In the opposite direction, as far as you could see, bonfires and lanterns awaited the new sensation. Bottle rockets whistled and popped Independence Day.

Even so, after a computer glitch pushed Columbia's debut to early Sunday morning, you found yourself at the NASA press site with 4,000 other media, expecting the worst. You paced and wandered, amped up on caffeine, sleepless for nearly 48 hours, making small talk with some Brits, eavesdropping on foreign tongues to no avail, alert for mindless distractions.

At exactly 7 a.m., the digital countdown clock struck zero and the entire world compressed into a hypnotic vertical window of flames and chemical clouds. Columbia's crackling engines stripped the very wallpaper off the dawn, and as she struggled to leave the Earth, her heart pounded through your shoes, clean up into your shoulders.

You were right there with it, from the get-go, tracking her from sea level, then unclenching with her as she climbed away from it all, away from the shootings and the lousy TV shows and the politics and all other manner of mortal foibles. Your fashionable detachment collapsed, and there you were, jumping up and down like a kid in a ballpark.

"Go, baby! Go!" We'd done something right, something huge, and it kept on going and going, higher and higher, like it would never come down again, and --"Go! Go!" – even when it vanished for good, you were still up there, suspended forever in the blink of a moment where myths and gods are no less real than bones of scorched titanium.


Foam Tests Hold Water

Findings contradict NASA engineers

Aug 24, 8:51 PM

By John Kelly

FLORIDA TODAY

Interactive graphics