On Friday, NASA sent out a press release saying that several news organizations had mistakenly identified pictures of the flag-draped coffins of the Space Shuttle Columbia's crew with images of coffins of war casualties from Iraq.

The story began Thursday when the free speech website thememoryhole.org published what it said were images of the coffins of U.S. military personnel who had died while on duty in Iraq. The images had been released to the site because of a Freedom of Information Act request.

However, eagle-eyed NASA-watchers as well as NASA employees recognized some of the images as being from February 5, 2003, when the remains of the space shuttle's crew were brought to the Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware.

According to NASA spokesperson Bob Jacobs, the error was first brought to his attention Thursday evening by Keith Cowing, the editor of the website NASAwatch .

"(Cowing) was the very first person to notify me because he saw (the picture) on CNN's Headline News," Jacobs said.

The fact that NASA Deputy Administrator Frederick Gregory featured prominently in one of the pictures on the website's homepage may have been a clue. [see images on SPACE.com]

At first, Jacobs thought it was a one-off mistake, but his opinion changed Friday morning when another NASA public affairs official called to tell him that the image had appeared in the morning's Washington Post.

"We thought (CNN) was a freak accident," Jacobs said. "We didn't know the pictures were posted on a website." 

As the day wore on, Cowing collected a list of news organizations, including Reuters and the Associated Press, that kept referring to the images as those of the coffins of U.S. military personnel.

The NASA press statement, released late in the afternoon, asked editors to "confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who were killed Feb.1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy."

"An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts."

The brief press release went on to say that "news organizations across the world have been publishing and distributing images featured on the web site."

By Sunday, thememoryhole'org's editor Russ Kick posted a clarification on this website stating that of the 361 images released to him by the U.S. Air Force, 73 of the images were of the Columbia memorial from February, 2003.

"Among the 361 Dover casket photos are a minority of images showing coffins of the Columbia astronauts," Kick wrote. "I didn't realize this at the time that I posted them, mainly because when the Air Force asked for clarification during the process, I specifically (sic) told them that I wasn't requesting photos of the Columbia astronauts, only military personnel killed overseas."

The offending Columbia image was removed from the website's homepage and Kick established a separate archive for the Columbia images. "So, out of 361 photos, the first 73 were of the astronauts ...," Kick wrote. "Doing the math, this means that 288 photos are of military personnel who died overseas."

Jacobs said NASA contacted the Columbia crew's family members to let them know that the images of their loved ones' coffins were being misidentified in the media.

"We wanted to make them aware of the situation, just in case they were watching CNN or reading a publication that uses one of the photos," said Jacobs.