Space Agency Names Panel to Investigate Delta Failure

An eight-member panel was named Sunday by NASA to investigate the failure of a Delta rocket with a $57.5-million weather satellite aboard 71 seconds after liftoff Saturday.

It was the third consecutive loss of a U.S. space vehicle this year.

The investigative board--headed by Lawrence J. Ross, director of spaceflight systems at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland--is to present its findings by July 2 to Rear Adm. Richard H. Truly, the space agency’s associate administrator for spaceflight.

Meanwhile, teams of technicians and engineers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its civilian contractors scoured reams of computer data in search of clues to the failure of the rocket, which had recorded a 94% success rate in 177 launchings before Saturday’s stunning accident.

Studying Data

NASA spokesman Hugh Harris said the investigators are “looking very carefully” at all available data--including “what radio signals might have been on what radio frequencies in the area.” Harris was referring to the possibility that the rocket might have shut down in response to a stray radio signal from an unknown source.

NASA officials have said the Delta’s main engine shut down almost as if it had been “commanded” from outside, raising the question of whether sabotage might be behind the incident.

Harris, however, said: “Nobody has started a--quote--sabotage investigation. It’s just, you know, nobody has ruled out anything at this point.”

So far, he said, there are no immediate signs of what might have gone wrong. “Nothing has jumped out of the data to say, ‘Ah ha, here is exactly what happened and here is the cause,’ ” he said.

Veered Off Course

Saturday’s launching at 3:18 p.m. PDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station appeared textbook-perfect until the rocket’s main engine shut down prematurely, sending the vehicle veering wildly off course and forcing Air Force range safety officers--concerned that it might crash into a populated area--to destroy it by remote control about 90 seconds after liftoff.

The Delta disaster occurred just two days before the 25th anniversary of Alan B. Shepard’s historic first U.S. manned space flight.

It also followed the loss of the space shuttle Challenger with seven crew members aboard on Jan. 28 and the explosion of an unmanned Titan 34D rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on April 18.

The 116-foot, three-stage Delta rocket, which is built by McDonnell Douglas Corp. of St. Louis, had logged 43 consecutive successful launchings before Saturday’s doomed mission.

NASA officials say there is no common thread among the rocket’s 11 previous failures that might provide clues to the disaster.

1977 Explosion

The last time the vehicle failed was on Sept. 13, 1977, when one of the nine strap-on solid-fuel boosters that help propel the vehicle into space suffered a burn-through and exploded. Investigators attributed the accident to suspected contamination of the propellant.

Other failures have involved such problems as premature ignition of the third stage in 1965, loss of hydraulic pressure in 1969 and a short circuit in the vehicle’s electronics package in 1974.

Seven of the newly named investigative board’s members are NASA engineers and one is director of the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. Although each of the members has had extensive experience with unmanned rockets, none had any connection with the Delta launch.

Ross, the panel’s chairman, arrived Sunday at Cape Canaveral to launch the board’s inquiry.

“He is just in the very preliminary process of learning what is happening,” Harris said.

Records Impounded

All flight records and computer data were impounded and placed under “lock and key” immediately after the disaster. The launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station--about 10 miles south of the launch pad at the adjoining Kennedy Space Center where the Challenge lifted off--also was secured.

Harris said past investigations of Delta failures have “gone pretty fast,” usually reaching completion within a matter of weeks.

He also said it was doubtful whether NASA would mount a salvage effort to recover debris from the rocket, as it did after the Challenger explosion.

Besides Ross, other members of the investigative board are: William C. Bradford and Jerry Thomson of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; Jon J. Bussee of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; Chester A. Vaughan and John H. Johnson of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston; Creighton A. Terhune of the NASA Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, and Don Hart of Edwards Air Force Base in California.