NASA May Have Found Tiny Piece of Space Puzzle

Space shuttle investigators don’t have the missing piece, but they may have part of it.

Investigators said Thursday that they have recovered a piece of Columbia wreckage believed to be a section of a banana-shaped carbon-composite bracket that was part of the leading edge of the shuttle’s left wing. The piece, known as a “T-Seal,” was found on the ground in central Texas some time ago, officials said, and workers recently pulled it off a warehouse shelf in Florida and identified it.

On the second day of the doomed mission, U.S. Department of Defense radar detected an object floating away from the space shuttle. Two weeks later, Columbia broke apart while reentering the atmosphere, killing seven astronauts.

The object that drifted away likely burned up in the atmosphere, but it is believed to have been a T-Seal, or a fragment of one. The newly identified piece, officials said, may be the rest of it. If so, it could help investigators determine the precise spot where superheated gas penetrated the space shuttle and destroyed it on Feb. 1.

Despite the find -- and despite assurances in recent days that investigators are zeroing in on the cause of the accident -- two investigators downplayed expectations Thursday that a final diagnosis is all but written. In addition to the possibility that damage during liftoff led to the accident, they said, other theories are still on the table, including the possibility that the shuttle was struck by a tiny meteor or by a piece of space junk.

NASA engineers and other officials connected to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the independent panel probing the accident, have said repeatedly that they believe a catastrophic chain reaction began just 81 seconds after launch. On Jan. 16, as the shuttle lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., several pieces of foam insulation fell from an external fuel tank and struck the left side of the shuttle. That impact, most engineers believe, helped open a breach in the shuttle that ultimately allowed superheated gas inside.

Members of the independent board and NASA’s separate investigation team met in Houston on Thursday. There, NASA briefed investigators on data that have been collected and analyzed. Later in the day, however, two investigators said they had not settled on the foam insulation incident as the cause of the accident, although that is the leading suspect. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

The investigators said they are working in four broad areas: performing aerothermal analysis, testing the danger posed by foam insulation, testing used panels that have covered portions of space shuttle wings on past missions and performing analysis of molten metal that splashed across pieces of the shuttle before it broke apart.

The work is still needed, the investigators said, before the foam insulation incident can be firmly linked to the breach.

“There are still some uncertainties,” said one investigator. “But we are moving from data-receive mode to data-analyze mode.”

Also Thursday, officials said a Kennedy Space Center, Fla., employee has been arrested and accused of stealing shuttle wreckage. Michael Penkiewicz, 44, has been charged with embezzling government property, transporting government property and making a false statement.

Officials declined to specify the wreckage that Penkiewicz is accused of stealing, but he is believed to have picked it up in Texas and driven it to Florida, where investigators are using more than 70,000 pieces of collected wreckage to determine what happened.