Monday, February 24, 2003
Clues sought in images of shuttle breakup
NEWS-JOURNAL WIRE REPORT
HOUSTON — In the urgent effort to pinpoint where wreckage from the space shuttle Columbia fell to Earth, investigators are finding more “eyes” watched the pieces fall than they first realized, and they are now trying to decipher what was seen.
Scientists at NASA and the Defense Department are masters at predicting the movements of objects in space. The Federal Avi ation Administration has computer software that can make sense of a mass of otherwise confusing radar tracking data.
As the search grows more difficult, those skills and tools are being melded with the sciences of meteorology, photographic analysis and astronomy, with secret military technologies about which no one can talk, and with plain, old human instinct. The lead agencies are learning a lot from each other as they write a new chapter in the book of trajectory analysis. The cooperative effort has not only helped locate larger pieces of the shuttle in the Texas-Louisiana area, but has also identified a possible wreckage landing site in the rugged area around Caliente, Nev.
The search has been aided by an unusual number of video images and photographs taken by space flight enthusiasts, a television station and others, including the military.
In related news, the Washington Post reported that several members of the panel that investigated the Challenger explosion say the board investigating the Columbia disaster has too many members who are on the government payroll, lacks scientists and doesn´t have enough distance from NASA.
Special Report: THE COLUMBIA CHRONICLES |  |