Shuttle Inquiry Points to Heat

A day after losing space shuttle Columbia and its crew, NASA appointed a panel Sunday to investigate the tragedy and said a more detailed analysis of the mission’s final minutes had focused on a sharp buildup of heat on the left side of the craft shortly before it disintegrated.

In a highly technical, 90-minute televised briefing, Ron Dittemore, the shuttle’s program manager, said NASA technicians had more closely examined the seven minutes before Columbia lost contact with Houston’s Mission Control on Saturday morning.

As the spacecraft passed over eastern California toward its planned landing in Florida, temperatures began to soar, rising 20 to 30 degrees in the left wing wheel well and, a minute later, rising 60 degrees on the left side of the fuselage, above the wing.

“We are gaining confidence that it was a thermal problem,” Dittemore said. But, he added, “it is too early for me to speculate on what all that means.... I don’t have any smoking gun.”

Four minutes later the craft, which was flying on autopilot, began to pull to the left, computerized controls compensating for increased drag, or wind resistance, on that side of the shuttle. The drag could have been caused by problems with one of the tiles that provide insulation from the 3,000-degree heat, he said.

“Does that mean something to us? We’re not sure,” Dittemore said. “It could be indicative of rough tile; it could be indicative of scratched or missing tile.” NASA investigators have ruled out several other potential causes, including an onboard fire, major structural failure and terrorism.

Meanwhile, NASA said remains of several of the seven astronauts had been recovered and identified from the massive swath of debris left in Texas and Louisiana by Columbia’s breakup, which began more than 200,000 feet above Earth at a speed of more than 12,000 mph. No one on the ground was injured, though health experts continued to warn that toxic material on the debris could be dangerous.

A memorial service for the seven astronauts -- David M. Brown, Rick D. Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William C. McCool and Ilan Ramon -- is scheduled Tuesday at the Johnson Space Center here. President Bush will attend.

In Washington, a senior administration official said Bush, in a spending plan being sent to Congress today, plans to seek a $469-million increase in NASA’s $15-billion budget. And Sean O’Keefe, NASA administrator, appeared on several television programs to defend the agency’s work, insisting that the agency had not cut corners on safety and pledged an aggressive investigation into what went wrong.

The independent investigative panel named Sunday will be headed by retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr. Officially known as the Space Shuttle Mishap Interagency Investigation Board, it will meet for the first time this morning at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, La. Its roster is composed entirely of current and former government officials and military officers -- a makeup that immediately prompted questions about its ability to remain autonomous.

During the NASA briefing Sunday at the space center, Dittemore said his investigative team remained interested in an event that occurred on Jan. 16, 80 seconds into the mission launch at Cape Canaveral, Fla. A piece of insulation broke off from the shuttle’s external fuel tank and struck the left wing.

Dittemore said it wasn’t until the next day, during a routine review of videotapes of the launch, that technicians saw what had happened. NASA experts studied the tape and concluded that any damage to the wing was “inconsequential.” While the debris damage was considered serious enough for review by engineers, they had seen a series of similar episodes spanning 15 years.

Nothing to Be Done

In any case, Dittemore said, there was nothing that could have been done, even if the experts were wrong. Columbia’s crew had no way to examine the outside of the spacecraft or make repairs, he said, and the shuttle already was scheduled to fly a reentry path through the atmosphere that “minimizes wear and tear.” And, he added, “there’s no other option -- you have to come back through the atmosphere.” Asked why NASA hadn’t attempted to photograph the outside of Columbia to check for damage, he responded that any such images would have been too grainy to be useful.

Donald Kutyna, a retired Air Force four-star general who helped investigate the 1986 Challenger disaster, said damaged or lost tiles are one possible explanation for increased drag on the shuttle’s wing. The loss of tiles on a wing, he said, would “increase drag and the control system would try to correct it.”

NASA considered Columbia’s flight, STS-107, routine until the spacecraft began its reentry into the atmosphere over eastern California. At 7:53 a.m. CST, sensors detected the sharp increase in the wheel well temperature, “the first significant occurrence of thermal events,” Dittemore said.

At the time, a Caltech astronomer in Bishop, Calif., Anthony Beasley, said he saw pieces of the shuttle, which he thought were tiles, breaking off in fiery trails, like “the orbiter dropped a flare or something.” Asked about this report Saturday, Dittemore suggested that Beasley had seen only the hot plasma that routinely builds up around a space shuttle during reentry.

A Second Look

On Sunday, however, Dittemore said NASA had changed its view of Beasley’s observations. A more detailed look at Mission Control data from Columbia’s last minutes indicated that Beasley indeed had likely seen pieces of the spacecraft separate -- and that the astronomer’s finding had become an important part of the investigation, he said.

At 7:54 a.m., with the shuttle over western Nevada, temperature readings on the left side of the fuselage, above the wing, showed a 60-degree increase in just five minutes, which Dittemore said was unusual.

At 7:58 a.m., over New Mexico, data relayed to the space center from the orbiter indicated that the spacecraft’s computer was attempting to compensate for an increase in drag on the left wing. About a minute later, the drag had increased. Such a pronounced correction, he said, “is beyond our family of experience. We’ve never seen it to this degree.”

At 8 a.m., Mission Control lost contact with Columbia. Dittemore said there are 32 seconds of data, after communication ended, that remain to be studied.

Instances in which foam insulation broke off the external fuel tank and damaged an orbiter date to 1988, when the shuttle Atlantis suffered “minor damage” 85 seconds after liftoff. The crew used a robotic arm to record video images of the craft’s belly, looking for damage to the heat shield tiles. After an uneventful landing, shuttle inspectors found slightly damaged tiles that had to be replaced.

In 1997, Columbia’s tiles suffered “multiple divots” after being struck by pieces of insulation, but engineers determined that the damage posed no risk to the crew, and the ship landed safely.

A booster rocket skirt on Endeavour sustained “superficial damage” on a February 2000 voyage believed caused by foam debris.

The external tanks are sprayed with coating about an inch thick of a Styrofoam-type substance. The insulation material is made by North Carolina Foam Industries of Mount Airy, N.C. The tanks are assembled by Lockheed Martin at a plant near New Orleans.

Witnesses Assist

Meanwhile, in an area of Texas and Louisiana covering at least 500 square miles, hundreds of local law enforcement officers joined NASA personnel collecting debris and fragmented human remains. NASA said it has received more than 600 phone calls and 200 e-mails from witnesses. Some of the e-mails included photos of the debris streaking overhead.

“We’re hopeful that there are some clues remaining to be found,” Dittemore said. “We’re going about our business methodically, effectively and with a lot of intensity.”

NTSB Sends a Team

All the physical evidence was being taken to Barksdale Air Force Base. The National Transportation Safety Board, which has investigated hundreds of airplane crashes, has sent a team to Barksdale to aid in the probe.

“They sent six or eight guys, experts in structures, metallurgy, that kind of stuff,” said Peter Goelz, a former NTSB managing director who remains close to the agency.

The NTSB experts will help study the wreckage of the Columbia, using microscopic analysis to determine the temperatures to which it was subjected and the force that tore the individual pieces apart. The experts will also look for clues about the sequence in which portions of the spacecraft separated.

Asked whether there had been plans to mothball Columbia, Dittemore said that, on the contrary, the spacecraft had been scheduled for two missions, one this year to the orbiting space lab, and another in 2004 to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Also Sunday, congregants mourned and prayed for the astronauts during services at churches across the country.

At First Baptist Church of Merritt Island, Fla., where 70% of the congregation is connected in some way with the space program, senior pastor Curt Dodd asked more than 1,500 worshipers to pray for the employees of NASA and tend to the grieving.

“Many have touched Columbia,” Dodd said. “They have caressed the tiles and run the programs for over two decades. Help them not feel alone.”

At the beginning of the service, the worshipers, many with tears running down their cheeks, sang “God Bless America.”

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Times staff writers James Gerstenzang and John-Thor Dahlburg and researcher Nona Yates contributed to this report.

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COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE DISASTER

Risks: Debate begins on whether tight NASA budgets have compromised safety. A7

Rescues: No one has devised a way to save occupants of a damaged spacecraft once it’s in orbit. A3

Inspiration: Astronaut from India encouraged others to reach for the stars. A9

Connections: In the Antelope Valley, a cradle of the shuttle program, many say their sense of loss is personal. B1