BOULDER, COLORADO -- One of the detective trails pursued into the loss of Columbia and its crew is space weather -- a search for any possible tie to the tragedy due to the Sun's behavior and its influence on Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere.

Could a solar flare have carried a storm of energetic particles to Earth, pumping up the volume of electrons and protons that, in turn, may have somehow crippled Columbia as it was heading home?

Here at the Space Environment Center (SEC) -- a research and service arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) -- space weather experts have sent to NASA data files in support of the investigation of Columbia's tragic destruction.

There is good reason to delve into space weather impacts on spacecraft. Solar storms have in the past played havoc with satellites, even frying onboard electronics.

One dramatic case involved the Galaxy IV satellite in May 1998. An influx of energetic particles is thought to have knocked out the communications spacecraft, disrupting pagers, automated teller machines, gas station credit card handling services, as well as television signals. Other spacecraft suffered loss of data and onboard processor problems during that same elevated blast of particles.

Spacecraft are also vulnerable to the Sun's interaction with the Earth's magnetic field. Moving through space, satellites -- even a space shuttle -- can encounter different electric fields. The surface of a satellite can quickly change polarity, where arcing and electric currents can flow within a craft, causing trouble in electronic circuitry.

The prospect that Columbia encountered some type of electrostatic discharge in orbit or while cutting through the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere -- enough to jumble control handling software, or even damage the integrity of the space plane's thermal protection system -- is being studied.

Information gleaned by a number of space weather watching satellites has been tapped, said Joseph Kunches, Chief, Space Weather Operations at NOAA's Space Environment Center.

For example, NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites -- the GOES series -- were double-checked to look at flows of energetic particles, as well as auroral data. Similarly, information collected by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) -- parked far from Earth -- was reviewed.

ACE is positioned almost a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from the Earth, situated in the Earth-Sun libration point called L1. By orbiting the L1 point, ACE stays in a relatively constant position with respect to the Earth as the Earth revolves around the Sun.

"When we first heard of the Columbia tragedy, we went back and looked at our data. The question, even to ourselves," Kunches told SPACE.com , "could there be something in our data that showed anything irregular?"

Kunches said that ACE did see a little disturbance from solar wind gusting by the spacecraft about an hour before Columbia was lost. "And 'little' is the right word," he said.

From ACE's vantage point approximately 1/100 of the distance from the Earth to the Sun, the satellite performs measurements over a wide range of energy and nuclear mass, under all solar wind flow conditions and during both large and small particle events including solar flares.

The spacecraft provides near-real-time solar wind information over short time periods. When reporting space weather, ACE can provide an advance warning -- about one hour -- of geomagnetic storms that can damage spacecraft, present a hazard to astronauts, as well as overload power grids and disrupt communications on Earth.

Kunches said that the center did issue what's termed a Sudden Impulse Warning based on the ACE observation. That kind of impulse -- a big discontinuity in the solar wind -- will start to integrate into the Earth's system. The Earth's magnetic field becomes disturbed and our planet's radiation belts are affected. On the ground, a network of magnetometers would be influenced.

But because the event seen by ACE was so small, nothing "pumped up the system," Kunches said.

"There's a big leap between that disturbance seen by ACE a million miles out to 200,000 feet [in the Earth's atmosphere as Columbia reentered], Kunches said.

The SEC has had a long-standing link with NASA in providing solar storm watching skills. Daily monitoring of the space weather environment is invaluable to help ensure astronaut protection during a space shuttle mission or for International Space Station crews.

Satellite data regarding solar wind and electron flow within the Earth's radiation belt was looked into for Columbia's reentry day. Space weather effects were examined that could have caused electrons to charge the surface on the space plane, Kunches said. But like the rest of the investigation, which has entered its fifth week, the results offered little insight into the cause of Columbia accident.

"There's nothing in that data set to lead one to believe that there was any relationship between space weather and what happened to Columbia," Kunches concluded.