HOUSTON, Johnson Space Center – As NASA paused to pay tribute to Columbia’s astronauts, the agency reported making “considerable progress” in recovering debris from the Space Shuttle and analyzing data in the search for clues to what caused the orbiter to breakup 16 minutes before its landing last Saturday.
President and Mrs. Bush joined NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe in honoring astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Dave Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Mike Anderson, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon in a ceremony at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. President Bush said the nation was “blessed” to have such men and women serving the space program, and although NASA is being tested at this time, “America’s space program will go on.”
In an afternoon briefing, Michael Kostelnik, NASA’s Associate Administrator for International Space Station and Space Shuttle said several engineering teams continue to work round-the-clock to reconstruct the timeline of the final minutes of Columbia’s flight from extensive data that is being analyzed.
Kostelnik said the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, chaired by retired U.S. Navy Admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr., is on scene at Barksdale Air Force Base, La. where the recovery of debris and human remains is being coordinated.
Kostelnik reported that larger and denser pieces of debris have been found in Louisiana, possibly including parts of Columbia’s main engines. He said recovery teams have been dispatched to California and Arizona, where debris has been reported. Kostelnik indicated debris recovered from areas farthest to the west would be critical, possibly providing information about the early stages of Columbia’s breakup.
About 12,000 pieces of wreckage, including the shuttle’s nose cone, have been retrieved from a 72,000-square-kilometer area of Texas and Louisiana.
Investigators are re-examining earlier evidence and re-evaluating NASA’s earlier determination that Columbia was not significantly damaged when it was struck by fuel tank debris on take-off.
Asked about contingency planning for the Station for the rest of the year, Kostelnik said all options to sustain a human presence on board in the temporary absence of Shuttle flights are being explored. The next Shuttle flight aboard Atlantis in March was to have brought the Expedition 7 crew to the ISS and returned to Earth the current resident crew.
A 1990 study conducted for NASA warned that protective tiles under the space shuttle were vulnerable to catastrophic failure if struck by debris and identified the external fuel tanks as a possible source of such debris.
Earlier today, a Russian Progress resupply ship successfully docked to the International Space Station at 9:49 a.m. EST, delivering a ton of food, fuel and supplies to Expedition 6 Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit. Progress has given the Station resident crew a “solid” supply of consumables, enough to sustain operations through at least late June, according to Kostelnik.
Bowersox, Budarin and Pettit opened the hatches between the ISS and the Progress today, and they will begin unloading its supplies on Wednesday.
