NASA Denies Misleading Public on Challenger Deaths

NASA officials, contending that their “credibility is on the line,” said Friday that they did not deliberately try to mislead the public about how the space shuttle Challenger’s seven crew members died in the January disaster.

Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been criticized for withholding for two months the discovery that crew members used emergency air packs and for later releasing a statement indicating that the crew had no warning of their doom.

At a news conference, NASA officials said they did not disclose the evidence of the air packs earlier because they had sought a thorough investigation before drawing any conclusions. They characterized the July 17 statement indicating that the crew had no warning as a “mistake,” saying the officials involved in listening to crew compartment tape recordings were not aware of the other investigation into the use of the air packs.

The question of whether the crew died instantly has figured in a $15.1-million wrongful death claim filed against the agency by the widow of Challenger Pilot Michael J. Smith and in discussions of whether the crew could have survived had NASA equipped the shuttle with an escape device.

‘Stung by Charge’

“We’ve really felt pretty stung by the charge that we have had information and withheld it from you all since March,” said Shirley Green, NASA’s director of public affairs, at the news conference. “That really is not the case.”

On Monday, officials disclosed that the crew members probably remained conscious for at least 10 seconds after the explosion that tore the shuttle apart. It was the first word from NASA that the crew had not died instantly and a dramatic turnaround from the release less than two weeks earlier.

On Friday, NASA officials released a chronology of the investigation into the astronaut’s deaths to correct what the agency called “misunderstandings” and elaborated on the circumstances of crew members’ deaths. “Our credibility is on the line on this subject, and we want to lay it all on the table,” NASA spokesman Kenneth Atchison said.

Looming over the agency have been published reminders of NASA’s handling of the 1967 Apollo launching fire. NASA announced after the fire that the three Apollo astronauts died instantly. An engineer later told the New York Times that a cockpit tape recording showed the crew cried out and frantically tried to escape--a fact that the space agency eventually acknowledged.

At Friday’s news conference, astronaut Robert L. Crippen said salvage workers found four emergency air packs from the Challenger along with other cabin wreckage during recovery operations off the Florida coast in mid-March. The air packs were first analyzed May 20, after officials from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology decided that autopsies of the astronauts’ remains would not be able to determine the cause of death.

Crippen said the agency first learned on May 21 that the air packs appeared to have been activated and determined on June 4 that they had been manually switched on by crew members.

But it was not until July 11 that Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin, director of life sciences at Johnson Space Center in Houston, received a complete report on the air packs, according to the NASA chronology. Crippen said the analysis involved examining valves inside the air packs and attempting to trace serial numbers on the equipment to determine which astronauts had used the packs.

Preliminary Analysis

On July 17, six days after Kerwin received the report about the air packs, NASA announced that a preliminary analysis of tape recordings inside the crew cabin showed that the astronauts apparently had no warning of their impending death.

“That’s where we screwed up,” Crippen said. “We gave you something that was preliminary.”

Rear Admiral Richard H. Truly, NASA’s associate administrator for space flight who authorized the press release, did not know at the time that the inspection of the air packs determined they had been used by the crew, Green said.

NASA officials have said that investigators listening to the tape could not initally make out the final sound on the recording. After further examination, they determined it was the voice of Smith. “Uh-oh,” Smith said, indicating that he either saw something ominous out the orbiter’s window or on the control board.

Crippen said the air packs used by at least three of the crew members would not have helped them if the cabin had lost air pressure, something the investigation could not determine. Crew members probably switched on the emergency breathing supplies when they lost oxygen 10 seconds after the explosion, Crippen said.

NASA officials had said that at least three astronauts used three-quarters to seven-eighths of their air packs, which have an air supply of up to six minutes. That seemed to contradict the agency’s estimate that the crew cabin slammed into the ocean 2 minutes and 45 seconds after the explosion.

But Crippen said depletion of the packs depends on how fast the users are breathing and whether their helmet visors are snug. He said the pack can provide as little as two minutes of air under certain conditions.