NASA Opens Hunt for Clues to Space Disaster : No Immediate Help Seen in First Debris

The first load of debris from the fiery explosion of the shuttle Challenger was brought to port here Wednesday, but officials said it offered no immediate clues as to the cause of the disaster that claimed the lives of the seven crew members.

“We can’t tell anything from it so far,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jim Simpson.

Simpson said also that early in the afternoon the Coast Guard cutter Dallas had spotted a cone-shaped object that was too large for it to haul in. A buoy tender was sent to retrieve it, he said.

Meanwhile, Simpson said, the largest piece in the 600-pound load of debris brought to the Navy’s Trident Dock adjacent to Port Canaveral measured 15 feet by 15 feet. It was made of aluminum.

Tiles, Bits of Piping

Most of the other sections of debris, he said, were about 4 feet by 4 feet and included shuttle tiles, pieces of light-green metal, bits of aluminum piping and a cylindrical tank made of Styrofoam.

The material was unloaded at the naval dock in the early afternoon by the 82-foot Coast Guard cutter Point Roberts, which had gathered it from various other ships involved in the search effort.

Lt. John Philbin, commander of the cutter, said there were no personal items, such as astronauts’ clothing or helmets.

The search for floating wreckage had broken off after sundown Tuesday. It resumed early Wednesday morning under bright blue, cloud-laced skies on a flat, seemingly motionless sea of an almost identical color.

A total of eight ships and nine aircraft--supplied by the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard--scoured a 5,500-square-mile area stretching from New Smyrna Beach north of here to Vero Beach and extending 60 miles out into the Atlantic. They carried a small army of searchers.

“I don’t know the exact number, but there are hundreds of people, possibly as many as 1,000, actively involved,” Simpson said.

The official search effort at sea and in the air was joined on shore by hundreds of enthusiastic amateurs--”Space Coast” residents and tourists who combed the sandy beaches.

“I’ll stay out here until I find something,” said 16-year-old Fred Wright as he scanned the horizon with binoculars on a section of public beach south of the launch spot. “When I saw that explosion, I saw something fly and hit just about a mile away from the shore here.”

Finds ‘Space Junk’

Lynwood (Lucky) Harmony, 34, of Port St. Lucie, Fla., conducted his search with a metal detector. “All I’ve been able to find is this,” he said, holding out a 1 1/2-inch salt-encrusted piece of metal embedded with a small rivet. “One of the old-timers around here told me it was space junk--but from an old launch.”

Fred Arnoldi, 70, a retired stonemason who lives in Scottsmoor, Fla., said the chances of the amateur searchers finding any debris were slim because of the calm sea.

“You won’t find any debris until you get a good storm,” he said. “The waves aren’t strong enough to bring anything in.”

But Air Force Master Sgt. Charles J. Miller, a spokesman for the official shoreline search effort, which was using military personnel from nearby Patrick Air Force Base, said that civilians have had some luck. “They’ve found tiles and other things that we’re not commenting on,” he said.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials, in radio and television broadcasts throughout the area, warned beachcombers looking for debris not to handle the material because of the possibility it might be toxic or present a chemical danger.

“There were several things aboard the Challenger that potentially could be deadly,” one member of the search team said. “We’re especially concerned about a small green canister,” a Coast Guard chief petty officer added. “You’d be dead in two seconds if you touched it.”

NASA officials also warned against “souvenir hunting,” saying that any little piece of debris might help in solving the mystery of what caused the shuttle explosion a little more than a minute after blastoff.

Minutes After Blast

The official search, which is being coordinated by the Defense Department, got under way only minutes after the disastrous accident, which occurred at 11:39 a.m. EST Tuesday.

The operation initially focused on rescuing survivors but quickly switched to retrieving debris.

On Wednesday, NASA officials said they had all but given up any hope of recovering any of the seven crew members alive. “I would always like to hold out hope, but we’ve already seen a lot of small debris,” said Jesse W. Moore, associate NASA administrator. “Based on our debris reports, there is very little (hope) at this point in time.”

Simpson, the Coast Guard spokesman, was asked at a morning press briefing whether the search teams would attempt to recover the solid rocket motors and other heavy debris that may be on the ocean floor.

“I’m not involved in planning for that yet,” he said. “We want to get what’s floating today before it sinks. And that’s really where we’re at now.”

The estimated depth of the water in the area of the explosion is 30 to 40 feet, NASA officials said.

Difficult Task

The search for clues in the debris promises to be a difficult task. Government investigators agreed that the search may prove at least partially similar to the investigations conducted after the 1983 shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan and the crash last June of an Air-India jetliner in the Atlantic off Ireland.

“Certainly, it’s going to be extremely difficult for them,” said one investigator familiar with such searches.

In the KAL incident, the United States spent more than $22 million in a futile two-month search for wreckage and flight recorders, covering more than 3,000 square miles of water with depths up to 2,500 feet. In the Air-India case, pieces of the fuselage and other material were recovered, but investigators still are unable to say flatly whether the crash was caused by a bomb, as widely suspected.

Gradually Expanding

Helicopters and other aircraft, serving as the “eyes” for the vessels, will fan out over a gradually expanding area here as currents and winds further disperse the Challenger debris. The ships are equipped with sonar, enabling them to detect wreckage or other objects through the use of high-frequency sound waves. Naval divers could be employed if necessary.

Marker buoys, emitting signals, tell searchers about the speed of the current and any changes in wind direction. An officially enforced “hazard zone,” stretching 60 miles out to sea, keeps unauthorized boats and planes away.

Tuesday’s recovery efforts were broken off at nightfall after ships spotted what appeared to be tanks from the space apparatus bobbing in the water.

The Coast Guard’s Simpson said the decision was made to have the ships anchor nearby and wait until morning to retrieve them. But when operations resumed Wednesday at daybreak, searchers were unable to locate the objects.

Times Staff Writer Philip Hager in Washington also contributed to this report.