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Columbia Photo Taken with Simple Telescope and Computer
By Leslie Hoffman
Associated Press
posted: 03:00 pm ET
12 February 2003
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Untitled ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- The shadowy, closely-analyzed photo of space shuttle Columbia's underside was not snapped with cutting-edge military equipment, but by three researchers playing around with an old computer and a home telescope in their free time, officials said Wednesday. The grainy photo was made Feb. 1 at the Starfire Optical Range at Kirtland Air Force Base and released Friday by NASA. It shows what appears to be a suspicious bulge on the shuttle's wing shortly before it broke apart. But contrary to reports last week, the photo was not snapped by one of Starfire's extraordinarily powerful telescopes, which are designed to spy on enemy satellites and detect incoming missiles. Instead, it was taken by Starfire Optical Range engineers who, in their free time, had rigged up a device using a commercially available 3 1/2-inch telescope and an 11-year-old Macintosh computer, the researchers said. "We were not asked by NASA to do this,'' said Robert Fugate, the optical range's technical director. ``There was no official project or tasking to do this. The people who work here are geeks. This was an opportunity to look at a rapidly moving object and try to take a picture of it. That's really all it was.'' Calls to NASA's Johnson Space Center were not immediately returned. The researchers, Maj. Robert Johnson, Rick Cleis, and Roger Petty, said Wednesday they wanted to set the record straight about the image, since its grainy quality had raised questions among those familiar with the Starfire range's capabilities. They said they used none of the technology the Starfire range is famous for. "This is the blurriest picture we've ever taken of anything, and this is the one that makes the front page of the newspapers,'' Johnson said. The men said they realized their photo's significance about 10 minutes after it was taken, after a family member called them to say the shuttle had been lost.
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