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Columbia Tracking Data Removed from NASA Site
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 11:50 am ET
24 February 2003
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Posted Note Complaint: Columbia Tracking Data Removed Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics maintains a handy review of new space launchings via the well-written Jonathan's Space Report. But he has taken a shot at, what he terms, NASA's "fit of apparent bureaucratic insanity". Turns out that the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Orbital Information Group (OIG) has removed orbital data called "elements" for Columbia's STS-107 mission. Columbia and its seven-person crew were lost over the skies of Texas on Saturday, Feb 1, as the spacecraft was re-entering Earth's atmosphere to wrap up a 16-day science mission. That information -- such as the space plane's inclination and high and low altitudes throughout the mission -- once made available to the public, has been secured for the duration of the investigation and review period into the Columbia disaster. In the place of Columbia tracking information, a "No elements available" is now on the OIG web site. McDowell complains in an Internet posting: "It seems totally at variance with the openness of the rest of the investigation, and just begs for conspiracy theorists and UFO nuts to start thinking NASA has something to hide. I completely understand wanting not to release preliminary engineering analysis from the investigation, but this is data that was made available in a standard way while the mission was still up, and was circulated as it came out on several internet lists." McDowell had already archived the now removed Columbia orbital data at: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/elements/27600/S27647
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