Orlando Sentinel (Florida) July 12, 2003
Photo Might Have Shown Hole
Nasa Didn't Try To Use A Camera, But Tests Indicated Damage Was Visible.
By Gwyneth K. Shaw
WASHINGTON -- The size of the hole in the space shuttle Columbia's left wing was large enough that a spacewalking astronaut or satellite cameras might have seen it, investigators said Friday.
The size of the breach -- thought to be roughly 6 to 10 inches large -- is "absolutely" within the detection capability of the cameras on board military satellites, said retired Adm. Harold Gehman, the head of the independent panel probing the cause of the accident. Some engineers in the shuttle program wanted satellite images to get a better sense of the damage, but ultimately the request was never made.
Gehman said that as the board hunkers down to finish its report, now expected late next month, its members consider NASA's management failures to be on equal footing with the foam as the cause of the disaster.
"We've now decided that these things are equal," he said. "I believe the way the report's going to characterize these things is we have what we're now calling either a physical or mechanical failure, and then we have systemic failures."
Armed with dramatic confirmation of the long-held theory that a chunk of foam that hit the shuttle caused enough damage to doom its fiery re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, board members said they are working hard to connect the dots between NASA's technical problems, its management issues and the Feb. 1 accident.
Investigators released a 189-page "working scenario" and said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration needs to regard the shuttle as the test vehicle that it is, rather than a spacecraft capable of routine flight.
In a test on Monday, foam roughly the same size as the piece that hit Columbia 82 seconds into its Jan. 16 launch blasted a huge hole in one of the reinforced carbon-carbon panels that cover the shuttle's wings. Investigators think the actual hole was probably smaller.
The dramatic results of the test validate the board's theory that the foam damage allowed a plume of superhot gas to penetrate the wing and destroy the orbiter during re-entry.
But further examination of test film also has shed more light on what was picked up by radar floating away from Columbia on the second day of the mission. Board member Scott Hubbard, who oversaw the testing, said investigators now think the object was a piece of the RCC panel damaged by the foam strike.
The test results also reignite the question of whether the NASA officials monitoring Columbia's last mission might have realized the extent of the damage had they ordered in-orbit photos or a spacewalk.
"I don't think astronauts on a spacewalk could have any problem seeing this hole," Hubbard said Friday.
NASA managers, however, accepted an analysis done by shuttle contractors that the lightweight foam had not done enough damage to endanger the orbiter or the crew. So they did not pursue satellite photos and never sent an astronaut outside Columbia to check it out.
Gehman cautioned that it is almost impossible to know whether NASA managers would have spotted the fatal damage if they had sought images of the wing.
"The question is, how far away is that imaging asset?" he said. "It is within the realm of capability to take a picture of a hole that size. Now, once again, you've got to remember you're looking at a black hole and a black surface. So whether or not it would have been visible or not, what the angle and the shadows would have shown, is very, very hard to predict."
Several people involved in the discussions over the imagery were reassigned to other jobs within the agency last week.
John Pike, head of GlobalSecurity.org, a space, defense and intelligence think tank, said the foam testing shifts the debate over whether NASA should have pursued the photos. Previous testing, on the carbon panels and mock-ups made of fiberglass, produced only tiny cracks that suggested photos or even in-orbit inspection might have been useless.
That's no longer the case, Pike said.
"One of the things that's changed here is it suggests that a request for imagery was reasonable -- not that it would have seen the hole, but it could have seen the hole. Because I don't think we really know that," Pike said. "There are a lot of imprecise, non-quantifiable issues that go into imagery interpretation, and so there is not a finite, yes-or-no answer.
"But I think one of the things that's changed -- from the answer to the request being 'probably not' to 'possible.' "
But the larger issue, Pike said, is still the fundamental one: Why didn't NASA engineers recognize the danger? The chunk that hit Columbia was well outside the parameters of the software used to predict the results of such a debris strike, but managers still accepted the results.
NASA's management structure and the resulting decisions have been a flash point for the board throughout the five-month investigation, and Gehman has said a large portion of its report will deal with management and how to fix it.
On Friday, Gehman said he expects that the board will release a recommendation before the report is issued that NASA change the way its Mission Management Team works. The team, based like the rest of the shuttle program at Johnson Space Center, is responsible for overseeing the shuttle during orbit.
Gehman said the problems within the agency, however, are much deeper than just the Columbia accident. Had the same board been formed to look hard at NASA's culture, it probably would have come up with the same conclusion -- even without the loss of a space shuttle, he said.
Gehman said the investigation has shown just how deeply ingrained in the agency was the idea that the foam was essentially harmless.
"If you'd asked the gate guard at JSC, he would've told you that foam can't hurt an orbiter," Gehman said.
That demonstrates a general lack of understanding about the shuttle and what its real capabilities and behaviors are. That's one of the reasons the board will emphasize in its report that the shuttle should be considered "developmental," more like a test plane than a commercial airliner. "You need to treat each launch as the first launch, each orbit as the first orbit, each re-entry as the first re-entry," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, a member of the board.
The board has already given NASA four interim recommendations, two each about images of the shuttle and the RCC panels.
NASA has agreed to seek images from satellites and ground-based telescopes on every future mission, and is working on upgrading its still and video cameras at Kennedy Space Center to better capture the seven-minute ride into space.
On Jan. 16, a crucial camera -- one that provided the best angle to see the foam strike -- wasn't working properly.
In April, the board told NASA it needed to find a better way to inspect the RCC panels for signs of wear and aging. Last month, it handed down what Gehman said is the most difficult recommendation to comply with: Find a way to inspect and fix damage to the RCC panels and the shuttle's thermal tiles while in orbit.
The agency is working on all four.
Hubbard, who worked extensively on the foam tests, said age might not be as much of a factor as the board had originally thought, given the results. While the panel used for the test was old, the impact of the foam was so powerful that it would have had the same effect on a panel fresh from the factory.
"That indicates to me that this impact would have broken even brand-new RCC," Hubbard said.
Copyright © 2003, Sentinel Communications Co.
