E-Mail to Columbia Discounted Danger

The first disclosure to the crew of the space shuttle Columbia that foam debris had rammed their ship during launch came in an informal e-mail on Jan. 23 that said the issue was “not even worth mentioning.”

A NASA official at Johnson Space Center wrote that photographs taken at the launch a week earlier showed a chunk of foam hitting the left wing, but he assured mission commander Rick D. Husband and pilot William C. McCool that “there is absolutely no concern” about the impact.

It is now believed that the foam strike was indeed the probable cause of the accident, in which superheated gas melted away the left wing during reentry to Earth on Feb. 1, killing the seven astronauts and destroying the shuttle.

Flight director J.S. “Steve” Stich wrote in the e-mail that the only reason he was relaying the information was his concern that reporters would ask about it. Husband messaged back, “Thanks a million, Steve.”

The e-mail exchange, released Monday by NASA under the Freedom of Information Act, provides more evidence about the relative lack of concern officials had during the mission that the foam debris could have caused serious damage.

Although a team of 40 experts was assembled to assess the foam hit within days of the launch, NASA decided against asking the Defense Department to use its high-powered spy satellites to photograph the possible damage.

In the days after the accident, top NASA officials said they could not imagine that the foam insulation that fell off the shuttle’s external tank could have damaged the shuttle’s critical thermal protection system.

Columbia investigators have said in recent weeks that NASA had become accustomed to the risk of foam falling off the external tank, because it had been happening to varying degrees for almost 20 years.

The e-mail to the Columbia crew did not reflect the serious misgivings that some top NASA experts had. Several NASA engineers were troubled by the incident, particularly because the foam that hit the Columbia was the largest debris strike in the history of the program.

The concern focused on whether the foam could damage the delicate thermal protection tiles on the wing or the leading edge panels of the wing, which were made of reinforced carbon carbon. On Jan. 22, Rodney Rocha, the space shuttle’s chief engineer, wrote a memo that NASA was wrong in its assessment that the foam debris was harmless and that its judgment bordered on irresponsibility.

Rocha had intended to send the message to 10 people in the shuttle management, but in a moment of caution decided to only provide a hard copy to his direct boss.

NASA spokesmen said the communication to the crew was a personal e-mail and that if the agency had been truly concerned about the matter, it would have provided a formal engineering presentation.

As it turned out, the glib exchange between Husband and Stitch was the first communication about the foam problem during the mission, according to NASA spokesman James Hartsfield.

The space agency later sent the crew a film of the debris hitting the shuttle.

The Stich e-mail was copied to four other NASA flight directors, including the lead flight director, Kelly B. Beck. The characterization of the potential problem, therefore, was well known within the NASA flight office.

“The issue is not even worth mentioning other than wanting to make sure that you are not surprised by it in a question from a reporter.... Experts have reviewed the high speed photography and there is no concern for RCC [reinforced carbon carbon] or tile damage. We have seen this same phenomenon on several other flights and there is absolutely no concern for safety,” Stich wrote.

The e-mail contains a warning that it is private and “not for release to the media.”

The communications were both casual and punctuated with humor. When Stich wrote that the foam apparently hit the shuttle’s wing in an area between the Main Wing and the Chine (an engineering reference to a stubby section of the wing extending nearly to the cockpit), Husband wrote back that he thought Stich was talking about China.

“I guess it’s believable that you might meet someone from China by the name of Main Wing,” Husband wrote.

NASA also released an audiotape Monday that includes comments from engineers when they became aware that the Columbia was in trouble as it reentered the atmosphere.

Mechanical systems engineer Jeffrey Kling, seeing sensor readings jump around, remarked, “What in the world?” He added, “This is not funny,” in a comment to flight director Leroy Cain. Seconds before the Columbia broke up, he said, “I am not believing this.”