Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Tape may aid Columbia investigation
NEWS JOURNAL WIRE REPORT
CAPE CANAVERAL — An early look at the magnetic tape from the space shuttle Columbia´s salvaged data recorder offered hope that it was in good enough shape to yield some information about the doomed flight, NASA said Monday.
Discovered in east Texas on Wednesday, the recorder held 9,400 feet of tape that was stretched and broken in one spot but otherwise in good condition, said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield.
“Right now, the potential for there to be data available to us looks promising,” he said.
The recorder – potentially the most significant piece of debris found yet – is in the laboratory of a Minnesota company that specializes in magnetic data storage, and its tape is being painstakingly cleaned.
NASA believes the tape stopped recording about the time the shuttle broke apart above Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts. It had recorded Columbia´s launch 16 days earlier and was activated again for the start of descent.
The recorder was collecting data from about 800 sensors on the fuselage, wings, tail and engines, and measuring temperature, pressure, strain, vibration, acoustics and acceleration, Hartsfield said.
Also Monday, a top NASA official said the rest of the shuttle fleet may be needed until 2020 – but the ships could become unmanned cargo haulers.
The official, Michael C. Kostelnik, the retired Air Force gener al who directs the shuttle and space station programs, said the shuttle could become a cargo vehicle if the job of ferrying astronauts could be turned over to an orbital space plane, an alternative vehicle that NASA is hoping to have in service by 2012. The orbital space plane is intended to carry as many as 10 astronauts but no cargo; the shuttle can carry 55,000 pounds to an orbit 100 miles above the earth.
Meanwhile, Kostelnik also said a recurring problem with foam that shakes loose and hits the shuttle´s sensitive skin during its ascent – now suspected of having caused the accident – is to be fixed, one way or the other.
NASA, he acknowledged, had a “long track record” of problems with the foam and that fixing the foam debris problem would be among the “upgrades” that NASA will make to the remaining three shuttles.
Information from the Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post was used in this report.
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