Engineers Not Sure Yet if It’s From Suspect Booster : Potentially Vital Shuttle Piece Unloaded

Salvage crews unloaded a 500-pound rocket segment here Thursday, and engineers began examining it to determine whether it came from the right rocket booster, which is suspected of triggering the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

The 4-by-5-foot segment was taken to a hangar at Cape Canaveral. It was widely reported that the segment was from the right booster, but NASA offered no confirmation.

‘We’re Looking at It’

“We’ve brought it in, we’re looking at it, and, at this point, we cannot tell whether it’s the right-hand or the left-hand (booster),” National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Hugh Harris said.

NASA engineers from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., had examined the debris aboard the Stena Workhorse salvage ship Wednesday night before it was unloaded.

One engineer, who asked not to be identified, said it was impossible to determine which booster rocket it came from. “It’d just be speculation . . . right now.”

An engineer from Morton Thiokol Inc., which manufactures the boosters, said that initial examination of the fragment found no evidence of charring. The fragment had been previously identified as coming from the aft section of a booster, about 20 inches from the aft seam. It is that seam on the right-hand rocket that emitted smoke and flames several seconds before the explosion.

‘Not the Smoking Gun’

If the fragment is from the right booster, “it could be a very good road map to what we’re looking for, but this is not the smoking gun,” NASA spokesman George Diller said.

Meanwhile, the Navy salvage ship Preserver continued efforts 15 miles off the coast to recover what remains of Challenger’s crew cabin and its seven occupants.

“We’re bringing up some pieces,” the ship radioed to shore. “The progress is slow. No major components have been recovered at this time.”

Radio transmissions indicated that Lt. Cmdr. William Shepherd, an astronaut, joined divers in the 100-foot-deep water near the crew cabin for a first-hand inspection.

More Search Vessels

Navy officials announced Thursday that they are bringing in two new ships and a small submarine to aid the massive effort to salvage the Challenger debris.

Sonar scans have shown more than 500 chunks of possible wreckage on the Atlantic floor, of which only about 225 have been thoroughly investigated, Lt. Cmdr. Deborah Burnette, a Navy spokeswoman, said.