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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
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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
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Report (PDF)
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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
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
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