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Shuttle investigators ask for more photos
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (CNN) -- The Columbia Accident Investigation Board asked people across the country Tuesday to continue sending photographs and video of the space shuttle streaking across the sky. Investigators plan to piece together a multi-layered image of the final moments of the orbiter's disastrous February 1 flight home. In their first news conference, members of the CAIB, led by retired Adm. Hal Gehman, said investigators are combining all of the authentic videos with accurate time stamps, radar data and incoming data from the shuttle to complete a "stereoscopic visualization" of what went wrong with Columbia. "What we are doing is building a great mosaic in which we are combining various video products ... along with the telemetry data and radar observations into a fairly sophisticated audio, visual and telemetry reconstruction from the time the orbiter Columbia crossed the coast until we lost the signal," Gehman said. The space shuttle broke up as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members on board. The CAIB was convened the day of the accident, based on a contingency plan created after the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe had asked the board to release a report on the cause of the Columbia accident in 60 days, but board members have said they will ask for more time. The CAIB comprises active and retired members of the military, as well as one member from the Federal Aviation Administration and one affiliated with NASA. It will oversee the entire investigation and will release a conclusion -- if it can -- at the end of the probe. "In any investigation, the very first thing you do is make no assumptions, make no judgments, and you suspect everything," said board member Rear Adm. Stephen Turcotte of the U.S. Navy. "We will narrow the focus. We're going to look at everything, and we're going to narrow it down to the most probable cause, if not the cause." Columbia did not have a "black box," like aircraft do, but investigators say they will scrutinize data from the more than 4,000 sensors that were on the shuttle. Gehman said debris collection is continuing in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, but so far, there have been no pieces of the shuttle recovered west of Fort Worth, Texas. "We continue to look at some interesting reports, I believe we've run down 105 of the 179 credible reports of debris west of Fort Worth, and we have yet to find a single confirmed piece of shuttle debris west of Fort Worth," he said. In considering all possibilities in their investigation, Gehman said, investigators are not "out to find any guilty people or negligence or culpability."
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