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Columbia Probe Finalizing Wing Tests
By Paul Recer
Associated Press
posted: 07:40 am ET
24 June 2003
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Untitled WASHINGTON (AP) -- Investigators sorting through the events that brought down space shuttle Columbia and killed seven astronauts are completing a rough draft of their final report while engineers in Texas continue testing how much wing damage is possible from a high-speed collision with foam insulation. The 13-member board has divided into teams which are now writing chapters of the final report. The board's chairman, retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, said he hoped the report would be completed and delivered to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and to Congress by late next month. Gehman and some on the board were to discuss their progress at a news conference Tuesday. A board official said the group may release a new recommendation to NASA later this week, but the final report was not expected until about July 24, just before Congress breaks for the summer. Tests continued at the Southwest Research Center in San Antonio where engineers were firing chunks of foam insulation at a mock-up of the space shuttle wing. The experiments were testing the theory that Columbia's left wing was fatally damaged when the space shuttle was launched in January. Photos showed that pieces of insulation peeled off the shuttle's external fuel tank and smashed into the wing as the craft soared toward orbit. An evaluation during the mission, based on the photos, concluded that the wing could not have been damaged enough to cause problems for Columbia. But on Feb. 1 the shuttle disintegrated while returning to Earth at the end of its mission. Seven astronauts were killed and debris was scattered over East Texas and parts of Louisiana. The shuttle fleet has been grounded while the board investigated the accident. The board announced earlier what it called a ``working scenario'' of the accident, that a part of the heat shield on Columbia's left wing was damaged, allowing the melting heat of re-entry to liquefy aluminum braces inside the hollow wing. The Texas experiments were to help determine whether the foam insulation could cause enough damage to the heat shield to allow damaging levels of heat to penetrate the wing.
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