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NASA not convinced photos reveal Columbia's problemAir Force pictures among several leads, agency says
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (CNN) -- NASA officials said Friday that they were examining photographs taken by an Air Force tracking camera shortly before the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated but were not yet convinced that they held the secrets to the final moments of the fatal flight. An aviation magazine reported Friday that the images, captured about a minute before the shuttle broke apart, show a jagged edge near where the left wing intersects with the fuselage. The damage to the left wing indicated either a small structural breach, such as a crack, or that a small piece of the wing's leading edge fell off, according to the report in "Aviation Week & Space Technology." Columbia's right wing and fuselage appear normal in the photos, the magazine said. But in a NASA briefing Friday afternoon, space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore showed one of the photographs and said that the choppiness seen on the left wing was due to the camera's resolution. He also said that experts had yet to establish if the distortion of Columbia's shape seen in the photographs indicated a fault or was the result of the angle from which the images were taken. "The nature of the photograph [because of the resolution] shows some choppiness to the wing leading edge. ... It is not clear to me that it reveals anything significant at the moment," he said. Dittemore said experts were analyzing the photographs but emphasized that many pieces of evidence were being examined. The orbiter, with seven astronauts onboard, broke up Saturday over Texas during re-entry shortly after experiencing intense heat and air resistance on its left wing. Wing section foundRecovery crews found a "leading edge" of one of the shuttle's wings, but it was not yet clear which one, Mike Kostelnik, a deputy associate NASA administrator, said Friday. "We do have a large piece of one of the wings," he said. "It is not clear which wing this is, but obviously, given the anomalies that we have on the descent coming through the left wing, obviously this structure is very important." In Texas, hundreds of people resumed the search Friday for pieces of shuttle debris, strewn mostly across the eastern part of the state. Meanwhile, an amnesty for the return of shuttle pieces expired at 5 p.m. local time (6 p.m. EST) on Friday. Taking shuttle debris, which is federal property, carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. (Full story) In Florida, thousands of shuttle workers gathered at the Kennedy Space Center for a memorial service to honor the Columbia crew: commander Rick Husband; pilot William McCool; payload specialist Michael Anderson; mission specialists David Brown, Laurel Clark and Kalpana Chawla; and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon. "We know the pride you have in our astronauts and our entire NASA family," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said at the memorial service. "And to honor the legacy of Columbia's astronauts, and as a commitment to the families, you can be assured that we will find the cause of the accident, correct the problems and return to safe flight." Key launch pictures out of focusNASA said Thursday that launch photos that could have shed light on the Columbia disaster are too blurry to help the investigation. "It's a disappointment that the camera with the very best [launch] view turned out to be out of focus," Dittemore said Thursday. "We've tried to look at alternate camera views, but we know we're not going to get the best view that we could have." The possibility that a piece of external fuel tank foam struck and damaged heat-insulation tiles on the shuttle's left wing during launch was an early suspect in the disaster. Dittemore played down the scenario Wednesday but said Thursday that no explanation had been ruled out and that foam debris would be studied vigorously. "The analysis is starting anew," he told reporters at Johnson Space Center. "We're still planning to conduct testing to better understand the foam and its potential impact." Other suspects include a calamitous impact with a tiny meteorite and a blowout of the landing gear. Moreover, agency experts will review the flight history of Columbia, which was the oldest shuttle in the agency's fleet.
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