Engineers Sift Through Shuttle Pieces for Clues

Pieces of what was once the flagship of the U.S. space program are strung across the floor of an industrial building here.

Yellow lines on the floor separate the chunks of wreckage to help engineers solve a mystery. Their job, quite simply, is to figure out which of the charred, twisted fragments belonged where on the space shuttle Challenger.

More pieces are brought in from time to time, but each day the catch is a little smaller. A Coast Guard officer speculated Wednesday that some of the lighter debris has been swept out into the Gulf Stream and has moved north along the Atlantic coast.

There are rumors almost every hour that bodies or personal effects belonging to the seven crew members who died in the fierce explosion have been found, but the reports are always quickly denied by officials.

Contrast to Chaos

The carefully structured order in the warehouse here stands in sharp contrast to the chaos that has gripped much of the spaceport in the wake of the Jan. 28 explosion of Challenger 73 seconds after launch.

Hugh Harris, head of public affairs at the Kennedy center, held a press conference Wednesday during which he answered nearly every question the same way.

“I don’t know,” Harris said, over and over.

Answers to some of those questions may come today in Washington, however, when the newly formed presidential commission begins hearings on the tragedy. NASA’s presentation is expected to take four to five hours and will be “quite substantive,” said a source close to the commission. “It’s going to take awhile for some of it to sink in.”

About 12 tons of debris have been brought back to the Kennedy Space Center and laid on the floor of a “logistics facility” not far from where Challenger blasted off.

New Phase of Search

Five ships and eight aircraft searched the waters again Wednesday, but the effort appears to have entered a new phase. The task now is to retrieve from the depths what already has been detected: at least a dozen major pieces of debris on the ocean floor.

Some of the pieces are believed to be quite large, and one has been identified as what is left of a solid rocket booster. If it is Challenger’s right booster, it could yield valuable evidence about what caused the tragedy, because that booster is believed to have failed.

The booster could weigh anywhere from 50,000 pounds to “a quarter of a million pounds,” said James Mizell, a retired NASA engineer who works as a media adviser in the press office here. He said it could take as long as two weeks to get the right salvage equipment to the area and raise the rocket.

Engineers want to be sure they do not damage the wreckage further in the salvage operation because it could be the most important bit of evidence in the entire investigation.

Unexpected Flame

Photographs taken seconds before the explosion show an unexpected flame flashing from the side of the right booster, and the wreckage could reveal which part of the booster failed.

The official investigation that begins today in Washington may take up to four months to complete. Meanwhile, the once busy spaceport already has grown quiet.

And no one is sure when the crowds will return again to watch another launch.