[meteorite-list] Credit Card-Sized Fragment Of Columbia Found In California?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:25 2004
Message-ID: <200302051721.JAA06652_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/shuttle_main030205.html

Credit Card-Sized Clue?

Crews Sent West Amid Reports of Columbia Wreckage in Calif., Ariz.
ABC News
February 5, 2003

A credit card-sized piece of debris found by a California couple in
their driveway could be a fragment of the space shuttle
Columbia that NASA investigators hope will give them new clues into
what caused the orbiter to disintegrate, killing all seven
astronauts aboard.

If the tiny piece, found by a couple who live near the Joshua
Tree National Park in Southern California, is from the
shuttle, it could be the kind of scrap of evidence that
engineers hope will tell them volumes about what happened
to the shuttle. The couple gave the fragment to the local
sheriff, NASA officials said.

NASA engineers want to know exactly where the heat
spike that occurred just before the shuttle disintegrated
began, because it could give them the crucial clue to what
went wrong. They are examining 32 seconds of computer
data that came just before all communications with
Columbia were lost and hope to have some information from
that data today.

As many NASA officials took time off to mourn their fallen
colleagues at a memorial service on Tuesday, teams of
investigators were dispatched to California and Arizona to
respond to reports of pieces of the shuttle being found there.

Witnesses have reported to NASA investigators that parts
of Columbia began falling off Saturday morning as it flew
over California and Arizona - before the ship disintegrated
over Texas. Early reports, officials said, indicate that the
debris belongs to the shuttle's wing.

Investigators hope the reported debris - if connected to the
Columbia - will help them piece together what caused the
fatal accident. The parts would represent the early stages of
Columbia's disintegration and could give insight into what
went wrong with the aircraft.

"We've had reports that there are pieces on the ground in
California and Arizona, and because we feel these results
are potentially credible, we have dispatched NASA
recovery teams to go and take a look at this material," said
Michael Kostelnik, NASA deputy administrator.

NASA engineers are also studying video footage of
Columbia's re-entry, including a three-minute amateur
tape shot in Arizona that appears to show pieces of the
shuttle breaking off as it streaked across the dark sky.

Bigger Pieces Less Important

Kostelnik said larger and denser pieces of Columbia, including
one of the engines, fell in Louisiana and are being recovered,
but investigators are most interested in seeing the smaller pieces
that may have fallen further West, because those would have been
the first pieces to have fallen from the shuttle.

Those pieces, because they are all coded to indicate which part
of the shuttle they came from, could tell investigators where on
the craft the trouble started.

Investigators also are getting new military photographs of the
Columbia's fiery streak across the country from an Apache helicopter
that was flying during its re-entry and recorded the shuttle's path.

In addition, investigators in Florida have studied sea currents in
the Atlantic Ocean near the Kennedy Space Center, trying to
determine where heat tiles or other parts that might have
fallen off the Columbia during its launch would have wound up.

NASA officials are also examining devices that measure winds from
the ground, up to 53,000 feet in altitude. These devices show that
particles from the shuttle were falling over Louisiana and east
Texas for about five hours.

Pinpointing the Beginning of the Problem

Investigators in Houston intend to study every second of data that
Columbia sent back during its flight, trying to determine exactly
when and where the problem started - with the analysis focused on
what effect the loss of tiles during the craft's launch might have
had on its re-entry.

The prime suspect in the disaster is insulating tile damage that
occurred in the first 80 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 16. A
20-by-16-inch piece of insulation foam that weighed three pounds
broke off the gas tank approximately 80 seconds after
liftoff and hit the underside of the left wing of
Columbia.

At the time, NASA experts looked at the damage and dismissed it as
possible cause of any potential problems. They even looked at the
possibility that tiles could have been missing over an area as large
as 7 inches by 30 inches, but on the shuttle's 12th day in space,
engineers concluded that the damage would not be "sufficient to
cause a catastrophic event," according to a NASA memo.

But as the shuttle re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Saturday,
there was a sharp rise in temperature on the left side of the craft
before the shuttle broke up.

Kostelnik said Tuesday that the piece of foam that fell off Columbia
was perhaps the largest to have fallen off any of the shuttles during
launch, but officials did not believe at the time that it posed a
catastrophic danger. Investigators are now working on the assumption
that the insulation foam did enough damage that those tiles were
unable to protect the shuttle from extreme heat on re-entry.

Still, investigators say, on almost every shuttle flight, the craft
has lost some of the more than 24,000 tiles that cover it to protect
it from the heat of re-entry. Some parts of the shuttle are more
critical than others, though, when it comes to safeguarding the
craft. Sensors show there were unusually high temperatures on the
left side and especially in the wheel well, but the investigators
examining the data are not convinced that is where the problem began.

Shuttle Parts Found in Texas

Searchers found more key parts of the shuttle in Hemphill, Texas,
recovering parts of its fuselage, circuit boards and landing gear.
Searchers found the shuttle's nose cone late Monday. All these parts
could help investigators figure out Columbia's trajectory and provide
other clues.

"Some of those parts can possibly be processed in a way that will
give you an indication of what was going on during the last few
seconds when the shuttle was obviously desperately trying to adjust
its altitude and stay on the flight path," ABCNEWS space consultant
Jim Slade said.

Officials have told ABCNEWS that remains of the astronauts will be
taken today from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to Dover Air
Force Base in Delaware for examination. Identification will need to
be done almost entirely through DNA analysis.

The remains of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon have already been
identified, and they will be returned to Israel today for burial.
Received on Wed 05 Feb 2003 12:21:55 PM PST