Control Panel From Shuttle Recovered : Recovery Team Finds Shuttle Control Panel

Recovery crews reported finding about 1,000 more pounds of debris from the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger today, including “some sort of control panel,” and used sonar scans to search the ocean floor for more fragments of the spaceship.

Recovery crews were ordered to pay special attention to any personal effects of the astronauts, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, that might be found--such as helmets, clipboards or other items.

A NASA spokesman said none have been reported so far. A strange-looking glove that washed ashore near Cape Canaveral was examined as a possible astronaut glove, but it turned out to be a special type of fisherman’s glove.

Pile of Debris Grows

Coast Guard officials said 13 ships and 13 aircraft fanned out over an 8,000-square-mile area today, amassing a growing pile of burned and twisted debris from the shattered spaceship, destroyed Tuesday in a churning fireball that killed Challenger’s crew of seven.

“They’re getting more pieces and larger pieces,” Lt. Cmdr. James Simpson said.

Two days after Challenger disintegrated in flames, Coast Guard search crews had recovered about 1,600 pounds of debris. The largest piece was 30 feet by 5 feet and the recovery team said it was “aluminum-like with wires.” Another fragment was 15 feet by 10 feet.

“It looks like some sort of control panel,” Simpson said of the large piece. “They described it as some type of electrical equipment.”

Boosters Destroyed

NASA has had little to say about history’s worst space disaster but Kennedy Space Center Director Richard Smith said Wednesday the shuttle’s two solid rocket boosters were destroyed by remote control after cartwheeling away from the fireball that blew Challenger apart when its fuel tank detonated.

“The SRBs were destroyed by range safety actions some 20 or 30 seconds after the event that took place,” Smith said. “There were indications that the trajectory of one of the solids was headed for a populated area.”

“The ships have recovered other pieces, some reported to be larger than any of the others,” Simpson said. “They sighted two large cone-shaped objects. They tried to get them aboard and couldn’t.”

Nose-Cone Sections

Another ship was dispatched to assist with the objects, which probably are nose-cone sections from the Challenger solid rocket boosters that are designed to parachute into the sea.

At the Johnson Space Center today, flight controllers faced exhausting reviews of data radioed back from Challenger from launch to detonation, hoping to find some indication of why the 4.5-million-pound spaceship blew up.