12-31-2002 - DREAM - I was looking at a sheet of paper or a computer screen - that had 11 lines on it.
The first 10 lines each had two Barbie Doll dresses on it. No two were the same - each dress was of a different color.

Then I saw the 11th line, and instantly had a vision of two astronauts close up - from the eyebrows up - and their heads
were full of smeared dirt. One of the men had light sandy-brown hair.

End

I thought this would happen in November - so my counting was off....

This is sooo sad.

Another dream from a reader:

Date: 2/1/2003 3:51:49 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: northsun@xxx

To: Dee777@aol.com

Dee~Thanks for putting this together.

Feb.1,2003-dream

I had dozed off asleep this morn around 4:45am AST(7:45amCST). I dreamed of a large JET airplane pulling up. It was rather dim light. I saw an 'old' man pilot. I and another shadowed person knew we were to get on this jet. I wondered at the time if this old guy could fly this plane well enough. We took off and had a short ride when I heard a loudspeaker saying, "There is an emergency and we'll have to land." I thought, "Oh boy.. there's no place to land this big plane.." but the pilot said, "Don't worry, I'll get it down."

We started a fast descent and suddenly I found myself standing free on top of the plane as it whooshed down .. arms in the air and feeling elated.. I could feel the wind whooshing by me,but I remained still with nothing holding me there. I looked down and saw a very narrow strip of green land.. between trees and highways, but watched as that pilot brought this big plane right down on a cushy, soft, gentle landing. It was amazing.

I popped wide awake about 5:30am(8:30amCentral) I turned on the news and they were announcing the loss of communication with the shuttle. I hadn't even remembered it was due to land this morn.. and then remembered my dream,s ynching with this event. It was of another dimension, for sure, but I saw a padded safe landing for the astronauts, wherever they are now. They are all ok.

Love,Jan

Date: 2/2/2003 3:09:53 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: northsun@xxx

To: Dee777@aol.com

Thanks, Dee. I saw you posted my dream. The 'nauts had a destiny to bravely fulfil. I remember seeing the "Challenger" crew of 7 at that time. They also were protected and 'taken home' in a similar manner. At that time I was given that they were an ancient spaceship crew come to earth in Lemurian time and agreed to leave earth together. I get a similar feeling of this Columbia crew of 7. They were 'lured' to be together again for this event. It may not be 'written in stone', but they knew it was a possible outcome and are given all credit and love. They all are the 'Magnificent 7s' in our time. A lot of good things will come forth from their sacrifice. It does bring attention to needed changes.

I went outdoors around 1am on Feb.2,2003.. Alaska standard time.. and just in time to see the most intense and magnificent aurora begin. It shot huge arcs, circles words and waves right overhead at my place in Anchorage. It was awesome and like a ray of hope and promise of much greater things at work. I gave a prayer of thanks for this sign in the heavens.

Today on Feb.2 is the 2nd anniversary of my beloved hubby, Bruce's departure from earth. He is a great energy and is in contact with all on that realm that works with us here in form.

There was a lot of number symbology on 2/1/03..a #8 day. It was 17yrs.since Challenger event..#8. Groups of #7 left earth with the Challenger and Columbia. On the same day we lost #7 teens in an avalanche. They were a part of a party of #17 people..#8 again.

I'm sure there are more significant nos. and events, but these stood out. #8 represents the power, money, responsibility.. management of the vehicles and tech stuff..#7 is the groups of souls that left and were of this 'mystical' realm. They were all 'the good guys'.. in essenc. It's a kind of twisted fate.. but always for learning and aiding for others in this process.

Love and Peace.. The Dove is en flight!

Jan

Timeline

NASA's Space Shuttle Program Manager, Ron Dittemore, reported that "The first indication was loss of temperature sensors and hydraulic systems on the left wing. They were followed seconds and minutes later by several other problems, including loss of tire pressure indications on the left main gear and then indications of excessive structural heating."

Analysis of 31 seconds of telemetry data which had initially been filtered out because of data corruption within it showed the shuttle fighting to maintain its orientation, eventually using maximum thrust from its reaction control system jets.

Still shots were taken from a video on a documentary on the National Geographic Channel presented 9-12-04
The 8 second time exposed photo was taken by an Amateur Astronomer who wishes to remain unidentified despite being on television on the documentary on the National Geographic Channel and has asked his name to be removed from this page
and images deleted despite the fact that they are available by watching the video. 
The lightning bolt hit the shuttle 2 seconds before it started breaking up. 
The shuttle exploded 6 minutes later.
NASA sent an agent to pick up the film and the camera from the photographer and forbid him to publish it.
NASA calls this a camera wobble or a ghost or artifact in the camera.
They prefer to blame the missing piece of insulating foam for the accident.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on February 5, 2003, that an unnamed amateur San Francisco astronomer had imaged Columbia with a Nikon 880 digital camera at around the time the shuttle first started showing indications of trouble, at an altitude of some 40 miles. The Chronicle reported that "in the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail [produced by the shuttle], the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades." This photograph was shown on the National Geographic Program on 9-12-04. The camera in question was sent to Houston for further investigation by NASA. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board subsequently concluded that this was an artifact caused by a faulty camera. Nikon has said that the model of camera used is known to occasionally produce a purple fringe on photographs as a result of "color interpolation combined with chromatic aberration", an effect that has been reproduced by independent reviewers. Purple fringing is a problem with many types of digital camera - not just the Nikon 880 - as a result of the optical phenomenon of chromatic aberration.

However, some have suggested that the United States Air Force shot the craft down with a laser (accidentally or deliberately). This explanation has attracted little mainstream support and is generally regarded as a fringe conspiracy theory. It would also not explain the image captured by the San Francisco astronomer, as the beam of the high-energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) system used by the Air Force operates at the infrared wavelength and so is not visible in visible light. [4] (Link)

It has also been proposed that this streak may have been a bolt of positive lightning; NASA has discounted this possibility.

Positive lightning is not the ordinary type of lightning that regularly hits airplanes, its much more powerful and lasts up to 10 or more seconds with a heat that is hotter than the sun . In conjunction with the damage done to Columbia on lift off... it contributed to the disaster. A photo on a documentary on the History Channel showing a purple colored lightning bolt intercepting Columbia's plasma trail. There was a sound in Columbia's flight path that was picked up by sensitive equipment and it has the same profile of a certain type of lightning the positive charged lightning bolt that is part of the sprite.

Positive lightning makes up less than 5% of all lightning. It occurs when the stepped leader forms at the positively charged cloud tops, with the consequence that a positively charged streamer issues from the ground. The overall effect is a discharge of positive charges to the ground.

Research carried out after the discovery of positive lightning in the 1970s showed that positive lightning bolts are typically six to ten times more powerful than negative bolts, last around ten times longer, and can strike several miles distant from the clouds. During a positive lighting strike, huge quantities of ELF and VLF radio waves are generated.

NOTE: 10-18-07 - David Sereda requested my captured photographs which I retrieved from a National Geographic video approximately 2005.
I had originally published them on this page, and was forced to remove both the photographs and the photographers name from this page when they were discovered here.   The You Tube video by David Sereda below is based on the photographs I sent him earlier this year in 2007.

10-18-07

Continued at: http://exopolitics.org/Exo-Comment-59.htm

The space shuttle Columbia broke up today as it descended over central Texas toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seven crew members were aboard. A Bush administration spokesman said the shuttle's altitude -- over 200,000 feet -- made it "highly unlikely" that the shuttle fell victim to a terrorist act.

Space Shuttle Apparently Disintegrates

Space Shuttle Columbia Apparently Disintegrates in Flames Over Texas Minutes Before Scheduled Landing

The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Feb. 1, 2003 —

Space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated in flames over Texas on Saturday minutes before it was to land in Florida. TV video showed what appeared to be falling debris, as NASA declared an emergency and warned residents to beware of falling objects.

Six Americans and Israel's first astronaut were on board.

In north Texas, people reported hearing "a big bang" at about 9 a.m., the same time all radio and data communication with the shuttle was lost.

Television stations showed what appeared to be flaming debris falling through the sky, and NASA warned Texas residents to beware of any falling objects. NASA also announced that search and rescue teams were being mobilized in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

Inside Mission Control, flight controllers hovered in front of their computers, staring at the screens. The wives, husbands and children of the astronauts who had been waiting at the landing strip were gathered together by NASA and taken to secluded place.

"A contingency for the space shuttle has been declared," Mission Control repeated over and over as no word or any data came from Columbia.

In 42 years of U.S. human space flight, there had never been an accident during the descent to Earth or landing. On Jan. 28, 1986, space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.

On Jan. 16, shortly after Columbia lifted off, a piece of insulating foam on its external fuel tank came off and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle. Leroy Cain, the lead flight director in Mission Control, assured reporters Friday that engineers had concluded that any damage to the wing was considered minor and posed no safety hazard.

Columbia had been aiming for a landing at 9:16 a.m. Saturday.

It was at an altitude of 207,000 feet over north-central Texas at a 9 a.m., traveling at 12,500 mph when Mission Control lost contact and tracking data.

Gary Hunziker in Plano said he saw the shuttle flying overhead. "I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it," he told The Associated Press. "I just assumed they were chase jets."

"I was getting ready to go out and I heard a big bang and the windows shook in the house," Ferolito told The AP. "I thought it was a sonic boom."

Security had been tight for the 16-day scientific research mission because of the presence of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut.

Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's launch, but also for its planned landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said it had no immediate comment.

Columbia's crew had completed 80-plus scientific research experiments during their time in orbit.

Just in the last week, NASA observed the anniversary of its only two other space tragedies, the Challenger explosion, which killed all seven astronauts on board, and Apollo space craft fire that killed three on Jan. 27, 1967.

PALESTINE, TEXAS

The City of Palestine is a progressive and diverse community offering its 18,000 residents a high quality of life in a semi-rural setting. Palestine, the county seat of Anderson County, is located in the central part of East Texas, 108 miles south of Dallas, 150 miles north of Houston and 180 miles northeast of Austin. Principal highways leading to Palestine include US 79, 84 and 287; Interstate 45 is 35 miles to the west. The City is served by rail carriers and has a municipal general aviation airport. Other East Texas communities in the region include Tyler, Nacogdoches and Kilgore

"On Saturday, shocked Israelis wondered if fate could have anything worse in store for them as they tuned in to watch the disaster broadcast live on local television channels, instead of the landing which had been scheduled at 9:16 a.m. EST.

Their disbelief deepened as newscasters reported the shuttle crash was first heard over a town in Texas named Palestine, a bitter irony lost on no one."

The irony of having a Texas president about to go to war is not lost on Americans either. Will America itself crash and burn this year?

Columbia Apparently Disintegrates Over Texas

Saturday, February 1, 2003; 10:17 AM

Space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated in flames over Texas on Saturday minutes before it was to land in Florida. TV video showed what appeared to be falling debris, as NASA declared an emergency and warned residents to beware of falling objects.

Six Americans and Israel's first astronaut were on board.

NASA announced that search and rescue teams were being mobilized in Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

Columbia was at an altitude of 200,700 feet over north-central Texas at a 9 a.m., traveling at 12,500 mph when mission control lost contact and tracking data.

NASA warned that any debris found in the area should be avoided and could be hazardous. There were reports of debris seen falling.

Residents of north Texas heard "a big bang" Saturday about the time the space shuttle Columbia disappeared on its way to a landing at Cape Canaveral.

"It was like a car hitting the house or an explosion. It shook that much," said John Ferolito, 60, of Carrolton, north of Dallas.

Gary Hunziker in Plano said he saw the shuttle flying overhead. "I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it," he told The Associated Press. "I just assumed they were chase jets."

"I was getting read to go out and I heard a big bang and the windows shook in the house," Ferolito told The Associated Press. "I was getting ready to go out and I heard a big bang and the windows shook in the house. I thought it was a sonic boom."

Bob Multer of Palestine, Texas, told CNN he saw what looked like a high-flying jet and heard a noise.

"It would be very similar to a tornado, it was very loud and intense," Multer said. "It was loud enough and it was low enough that it shook the building."

In 42 years of human space flight, NASA has never lost a space crew during landing or the ride back to orbit. In 1986, space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.

Security had been tight for the 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut.

The astronauts had conducted more than 80 experiments on behalf of NASA and the European, Japanese, German and Canadian space agencies, as well as numerous student and commercial investigations. The shuttle did not visit the International Space Station on this trip.

Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing.

On launch day, a piece of insulating foam on the external fuel tank came off during liftoff and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle.

Leroy Cain, the lead flight director in Mission Control, had assured reporters Friday that engineers had concluded that any damage to the wing was considered minor and posed no safety hazard.

Columbia is NASA's oldest shuttle and first flew in 1981.

© 2003 The Associated Press

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA discovered a fuel-line crack in its newest space shuttle Wednesday, the same potentially dangerous problem affecting the rest of the fleet.

The small crack was found in the metal liner of a hydrogen-fuel line inside Endeavour, which returned from orbit just last month. Similar cracks have been found in the same parts on the three other shuttles, Atlantis, Discovery and Columbia.

Engineers are still inspecting Endeavour, which first flew in 1992, and more cracks are anticipated.

"We've got it on the other three, so we're not necessarily surprised to see that Endeavour has cracks, too," said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham.

Buckingham said there is no way to know, with certainty, when or how the cracks occurred. "But I think a reasonable person can assume we've been flying with these cracks," he added.

The problem was first detected three weeks ago on Atlantis. Inspections quickly turned up cracks on Discovery and then Columbia. The work on Endeavour had to wait until the shuttle returned from Edwards Air Force Base in California, where it landed June 19 following a space station visit.

Columbia's science research flight with the first Israeli astronaut, which had been scheduled for a July 19 liftoff, is on indefinite hold. The launch dates of all other shuttle flights this year are also in question.

The concern is not that the 12-inch-diameter fuel lines might leak, but that the cracks might grow and that metal chips might break off and end up in an engine. That could lead to an engine shutdown during launch, with possibly catastrophic results.

The cracks are up to three-tenths of an inch in length and are located in liners used to direct the flow of hydrogen fuel to the main engines.

Buckingham said NASA does not consider the shuttle fleet grounded — at least not yet. There is a possibility that engineers may conclude that the spaceships can fly safely with the cracks and that no repairs are needed, he said. But if the cracked liners need to be replaced, it could take months to manufacture new parts.

Seven engineering teams, involving workers around the country, are working practically nonstop to determine the severity of the problem and devise possible ways to fix it.

Despite the problem, NASA is still working toward a late August launch of Atlantis and an October launch of Endeavour. Both are space station missions.

By PAM EASTON

Associated Press Writer

Published February 1, 2003, 1:15 PM CST

NACOGDOCHES, Texas -- Bits of machinery and pieces of metal were found strewn across a wide area of east Texas after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart. One piece crashed through the roof of a dentist's office.

Police and NASA officials warned residents the debris could be toxic and should not be touched. The Environmental Protection Agency prepared to coordinate a cleanup, and the Army's 1st Cavalry Division deployed a task force -- including helicopters and military police -- to help search for wreckage.

"It's all over Nacogdoches," said James Milford, owner of a barber shop in downtown. "There are several little pieces, some parts of machinery ... there's been a lot of pieces about 3 feet wide."

On the edge of downtown Nacogdoches, 135 miles northeast of Houston, a National Guardsman stood watch over a steel rod with silver bolts that landed in the grass outside a yard. People streamed up to take photos of the debris.

NASA lost communication with Columbia as the ship soared across Texas at an altitude of about 200,000 feet.

Debris was reported in several east Texas counties and along the Texas-Louisiana border. A fisherman from DeRidder, La., Elbie Bradley, reported hearing a falling object splash into the Toledo Bend reservoir, which straddles the border.

"I thought it was an airplane that hit the lake," he said. "Before the piece came down, it sounded like the start of a big motor without an exhaust on it."

In Nacogdoches, Jeff Hancock, a 29-year-old dentist, said he found a chunk of debris in his office.

"There's actually a piece in my office. It came through the roof of my office. It's about a footlong metal bracket," he said.

Ed Rohner, Nacogdoches airport manager, said some type of tank ended up on a runway.

"We have one large, several foot in diameter, some type of tank that was in the middle of a runway," Rohner said. "We've got pieces of debris all along the entrance road to the airport," Rohner said.

R.T. Gregory, a waiter at Aubrey's Cafe in Nacogdoches said he and about 50 other people gathered around a taped-off piece of metal debris in the parking lot of the Commercial Bank of Texas. He said the debris was about 4 feet long and 4 feet wide.

Nacogdoches Fire Chief Thomas Lambert told Dallas-Fort Worth television WFAA he found a half-moon shaped piece, 5 to 5 1/2 feet long.

"This piece I'm looking at does have severe burn marks on it, like you take a blow torch and put it on metal until it turns a kind of a bluish-greenish color," he said.

Authorities were investigating what they thought could be a piece of the shuttle next to the driveway to Rice High School along busy Interstate 45.

"It looks like a piece of tile, said Rice Police Chief James McDuffie. Rice is located just north of Corsicana.

Authorities ordered people to stay 100 yards away from the debris because of contamination fears. However, a number of Nacogdoches residents were picking up pieces and turning them in to law enforcement officers, authorities said.

The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office had received more than 30 confirmed reports of fallen debris, Campbell said. The items ranged in size from small pieces of tile to 2-by-2 foot pieces of metal.

"We've had people bring pieces of it up here to the office," said Sheriff James Campbell. "We certainly want to discourage that.

Cherokee County is in East Texas, about halfway between Tyler and Lufkin.

Residents in southern Arkansas also were warned to stay away from any debris, although there were no confirmed reports of any falling there.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

Crew of seven dead

Craft disintegrates in flames over Texas

Residents warned of falling debris

NOAA map of debris area

A trail of debris was visible from space shuttle Columbia over Texas. ((AP Photo/WFAA-TV))

Bush says 'no survivors' from shuttle accident

Debris Falling Over Texas

By Mike Cabbage

Sentinel Staff Writer

Published February 1, 2003, 1:38 PM CST

Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its return to Earth today, killing seven astronauts and dealing a stunning blow to America’s space program.

President Bush said "there are no survivors" from the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. He called it "terrible news and great sadness to our country."

Almost three hours after the accident, the White House confirmed the shuttle was lost. Witnesses in Central Texas reported hearing a loud explosion and seeing trails of flaming debris falling along the shuttle's flight path as Columbia traveled 38 miles high at six times the speed of sound en route to a planned 9:16 a.m. landing at Kennedy Space Center.

“We ran out and started looking around,” said Benjamin Laster of Kemp, Texas. “I saw a puff of vapor and smoke and saw a big chunk of material fall.”

"Sadly, from the video that's available, it does not appear that there were any survivors," said Bill Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space flight.

Readdy said it was too early to speculate about the exact cause. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said the accident was not caused by anything or anyone on the ground.

O'Keefe said President Bush was speaking to the families of the astronauts.

"We trust the prayers of the nation will be with them and with their families. A more courageous group of people you could not have hoped to know," O'Keefe said.

All appeared normal as Columbia fired its thrusters at 8:17 a.m. EST to leave orbit and land at KSC. For much of the fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere, communications between the ground and the shuttle routinely are lost. But when contact with Columbia was scheduled to resume about 9 a.m., ground controllers heard nothing but silence.

“Search and rescue teams in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have been alerted,” said James Hartsfield, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “Any debris located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area should be avoided. It may be hazardous.”

Speculation immediately focused on damage to Columbia's protective heat tiles that the ship suffered during launch from KSC on Jan. 16. Launch pad cameras detected a piece of insulating foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank breaking off and striking Columbia's left wing.

Minor tile damage during launch is not unusual. Leroy Cain, NASA's flight director for Columbia's return home, said Friday that the wing damage was not considered serious and no unusual precautions were being taken.

“We can't say with great detail the degree of the damage other than all of the analysis suggests that it would be very minor in terms of the amount of tile that might actually be missing,” Cain said Friday. “The analysis says that we have plenty of margin in those areas in that regard and that the impact could not have been ..... enough to take out any significant amount of tile.”

Columbia's crew consists of the commander, Air Force Col. Rick Douglas Husband; the co-pilot, Navy Cmdr. William C. McCool; mission specialists Kalpana Chawla; Navy Capt. David M. Brown; Air Force Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson; Navy Cmdr. Laurel Blair Salton Clark; and Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut.

Columbia was coming home from a successful mission to do science research in weightlessness 170 miles above Earth. During the shuttle's 16 days in space, the crew split into two shifts to work around the clock on 80 or so physical, materials and life science experiments. Their laboratory was a 20-foot by 14-foot pressurized aluminum module inside Columbia's cargo bay that the astronauts accessed through a tunnel from the crew compartment. NASA officials were elated the flight - the shuttle's 113th - had accomplished all of its major goals.

“This has been a very successful mission,” Cain said Friday. “It's far exceeded folks' expectations from a science standpoint so we are very pleased.”

The landing was the first time behind the controls for astronaut Husband, a 45-year-old former Air Force test pilot assigned to command Columbia after copiloting a previous shuttle flight. It was co-pilot McCool's first landing. The accident appeared to be the U.S. space program's third fatal accident involving astronauts. Apollo 1 caught fire on the launch pad, killing its three-man crew during a countdown test in 1967. Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch in January 1986, killing seven astronauts.

After the Challenger accident, most of NASA's attention was focused on safety issues surrounding the shuttle's launch. Landing was considered less risky.

“I worry a lot less during this [landing] than the launch,” said veteran NASA shuttle manager Wayne Hale, who supervised many launches and landings. “There are just fewer ways of getting in trouble during entry.” An automated landing system never is used, however, making touchdown subject to human error. If trouble occurs, there aren't many options. Because the shuttle lands without power, it glides steeply out of orbit after circling a quarter of the way around the globe.

“It is the one task that the pilots train most extensively for as far as the hands-on flying,” former astronaut Richard Covey said. “There is no margin for error in the landing sequence.”

Unlike the pilot of a powered airplane, a shuttle commander can't open the throttle, pull up and circle around to try again. Once the shuttle fires its engines to leave orbit and re-enter Earth's atmosphere, it's committed to coming down.

Today's landing attempt was the 62nd for a shuttle at KSC, compared with 49 at Edwards Air Force Base and one at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. Nineteen were night landings, 14 of which have been at KSC. The other five were at Edwards.

The accident occurred during Columbia's 28th flight. It was the 88th mission since Challenger's 1986 explosion. That disaster, NASA's first accident in flight, sidelined the space agency for 32 months.

With more than two dozen additional space station assembly flights scheduled aboard the shuttle during the next five years, the future of the station, as well as the shuttle program itself, could be in jeopardy.

The influential chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, recently said the loss of another orbiter could set human spaceflight back for years.

“If we do lose another orbiter, we can't replace it as quickly as we replaced Challenger,” Sensenbrenner said. “We also are considerably behind as the result of some management failures and some funding failures to go to the next stage for a new reusable launch vehicle that could have human beings on board.”

Columbia's mission was the first of six scheduled for 2003. The next scheduled shuttle flight is a mission to the international space station aboard Atlantis in early March. But NASA's three other orbiters - Atlantis, Endeavour and Discovery - likely will be grounded pending a review of Columbia's accident.

NASA won't have a vehicle other than the shuttle capable of carrying people into space until at least the end of the decade. However, this morning's accident could accelerate efforts to find a replacement.

In 1996, President Clinton directed NASA to find a successor vehicle that was 10 times cheaper and 100 times safer. However, the space agency pulled the plug in March 2001 on the $1.3 billion X-33 program, the best-known effort to develop a prototype for a next-generation spacecraft.

Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin hoped to use X-33 as a steppingstone to a new full-scale reusable launch vehicle dubbed VentureStar. But the program was stalled by a series of engineering problems. With the project hopelessly behind schedule and over budget, additional government funding was cut off.

As a result, there is no viable alternative to the shuttle on the horizon. Much of the funding for developing a possible replacement was shifted last year to development of a small orbital spaceplane that would serve as a crew escape ship for the station.

One option being considered would launch the spaceplane with station-bound crew and cargo on U.S. expendable rockets in 10 years or so.

Copyright © 2003, Orlando Sentinel

2-2-03

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

A San Francisco amateur astronomer who photographs the space shuttles whenever their orbits carry them over the Bay Area has captured five strange and provocative images of the shuttle Columbia just as it was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere before dawn Saturday.

The pictures, taken with a Nikon 8 camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle's passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately.

"They clearly record an electrical discharge like a lightning bolt flashing past, and I was snapping the pictures almost exactly . . . when the Columbia may have begun breaking up during re-entry," he said.

The photographer invited The Chronicle to view the photos on his computer screen Saturday night, and they are indeed puzzling.

They show a bright scraggly flash of orange light, tinged with pale purple, and shaped somewhat like a deformed L. The flash appears to cross the Columbia's dim contrail, and at that precise point, the contrail abruptly brightens and appears thicker and somewhat twisted as if it were wobbling.

"I couldn't see the discharge with own eyes, but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it," the photographer said. "But I'm not going to speculate about what it might be."

E-mail David Perlman at dperlman@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/02/MN221641.DTL

NASA: Remains of all seven astronauts found

Sunday, February 2, 2003 Posted: 8:18 PM EST (0118 GMT)

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (CNN) -- In the final minutes before the space shuttle Columbia fell apart over east Texas Saturday, something occurred on the craft's left side -- events significant enough to make the space craft roll to the right in an effort to keep Columbia on an even keel, a NASA official said Sunday.

Computers monitoring the craft's progress as it sped from California toward Texas indicated that temperatures on Columbia's left-side mid-fuselage increased four times faster than temperatures on the craft's right-hand side, said Ron Dittemore, speaking at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

According to monitoring devices, the temperature on the left side increased by 60 degrees Fahrenheit during five minutes, said Dittemore, NASA's top shuttle program manager. During the same time, temperatures on the right went up by 15 degrees.

Moments later, he said, instruments noted an increase in drag on Columbia's left side. As it headed into west Texas, the drag was so pronounced that the craft's right ailerons tried to correct its flight, working to roll Columbia to the right, Dittemore said.

"Soon after, we had loss of signal," Dittemore said.

NASA officials also revealed that remains of all seven of the astronauts had been recovered.

Director of flight crew operations Bob Cabana declined to give further details out of respect for the families but said that the remains were being treated with the greatest respect.  We are honoring our fellow crew mates," said Cabana.

A massive investigation involving federal, state and local authorities was underway Sunday to try to solve the mystery of what caused the fatal tragedy.

At the same time, plans for a memorial began taking shape to honor the seven astronauts killed Saturday morning.

The accident strew thousands of pieces of debris across a wide area of east Texas and Louisiana. NASA investigation teams have been dispatched to coordinate the recovery of physical evidence.

Pieces of the Columbia -- up to about eight feet in length -- have been found at more than 1,000 sites around Nacogdoches County, Texas, Sheriff Thomas Kerss said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the White House said President Bush, who spoke to family members of the crew by telephone Saturday, will attend a memorial service Tuesday in Houston along with first lady Laura Bush.

Immediately after the craft was lost, NASA instituted its investigation protocols, which meant that all data relating to the flight was impounded, Dittemore told reporters.

Investigators were expected to arrive Sunday at a Lockheed Martin plant in New Orleans where the 154-foot external fuel tanks are built. The company already has impounded records pertaining to the tank's production, a spokesman said.(Investigation)

Authorities warned residents not to touch any pieces of the spacecraft since they could be contaminated with toxic residue from the spacecraft's fuel system and could be crucial to determine what happened to Columbia.

In Nacogdoches County, at least 70 people concerned that they may have touched debris had gone to area hospitals by Sunday morning, but none showed any injuries, said county emergency management director Sue Kennedy.

The process of recovering the debris may be a lengthy one, investigators warned.

'Weeks or months' to complete search

"We have a vast amount of forest and timberland within our county. Some of these areas may not receive coverage for weeks or months," Kerss said.

In Hemphill, about 180 miles southeast of Dallas, authorities found numerous fragments of the spacecraft and human remains believed to be from its crew. The FBI is investigating four reports of human remains found in the surrounding county, and a piece of debris the size of a compact car landed in a pond near Hemphill, authorities said.

"The FBI has informed us that ... is federal property," said Kennedy. "They will pursue legal action and prosecute if necessary to get that back."

"We owe it to them every single second of the day to be sure we dedicate ourselves to finding out what went wrong," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Sunday. "We're going to find out what caused this, we're going to make sure we correct it and we're going to make sure this never happens again."

NASA officials said the shuttle's left wing lost hydraulic sensors, lost tire pressure readings and then registered intense heat before breaking apart. Officials also said they would take another look at an incident during Columbia's January 16 launch in which a piece of insulation struck the left wing.

In addition to NASA's internal probe, an independent investigation will be led by retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, who headed the probe of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

'A man of God'

The shuttle crew was remembered during Sunday church services. In Amarillo, Texas, at shuttle commander Rick Husband's church, family friend Patty Ragan remembered Husband as "a man of God" who "put himself into everything he did with a full heart."

In Racine, Wisconsin, friends and family members mourned mission specialist Laurel Clark at Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church.

"Laurel was a very intense person who would set goals and would go for them," Clark's brother, Daniel Salton, said Sunday. "And I think that's a great role model for kids today. ... You can do great things for humanity if you just set some small goals and always go for the next thing and set your sights higher."

The seven astronauts killed in the disaster were Husband, Clark, pilot William McCool, payload commander Michael Anderson, mission specialists David Brown and Kaplana Chawla, and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

A NASA official said the shuttle's altitude made it "highly unlikely" that it was a victim of a terrorist act. FBI officials quickly discounted the possibility of foul play or terrorism.

Space shuttle flights have been put on hold until NASA can learn what caused the disaster. NASA said the international space station, where two astronauts and a cosmonaut remain, has enough supplies to last the crew until June. An unmanned Russian supply ship was launched to the space station on Sunday.

The next shuttle flight had been scheduled for March 1.

Officials asked anyone who finds debris to call (281) 483-3388.

Columbia was lost less than a week after the anniversaries of two other deadly space program disasters -- the 17th anniversary on January 28 of the explosion of the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the 36th anniversary on January 27 of a launch pad fire that killed three Apollo astronauts in 1967.

List of shuttle debris found

Highlights of the hundreds of reports of debris from the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia.

Texas

• Remains that a hospital employee identified as charred torso, thigh bone and skull on a rural road near other unspecified debris in Hemphill, east of Nacogdoches.

• Remains identified as a charred human leg on a farm in Sabine County, about 50 miles east of Nacogdoches.

• Intact, charred helmet and astronaut's patch in San Augustine County.

• A rounded piece of what appeared to be metal, about 4 feet by 5 feet, found on a rural highway in Neches.

• Foot-long metal bracket that smashed through roof of dentist's office in Nacogdoches.

• Half-moon-shaped metal piece, about 5 feet long, in front yard in Nacogdoches, described as jagged with severe burn marks.

• V-shaped chunk of metal in the median of U.S. 79 just northeast of Palestine, in Anderson County. More unspecified debris found at nearby Pert.

• 2-foot square pieces of metal, small pieces of tile in Cherokee County, just west of Nacogdoches, and in Rusk County, just to the north.

• A 5- to 6-foot-long object that looks like part of the landing gear found 12 miles south of San Augustine, with a piece that looks like part of a radio, with wires hanging out, found half a mile away.

• 300 pieces, including one that would be difficult to fit into a pickup truck, found in Cherokee County.

• 25 pieces found on a 20-acre campus of the Douglas Independent School District in Nacogdoches. Possible 5- by 5-inch piece of tile in front of Rice High School in Rice, in Navarro County.

• Tank, about 3 feet in diameter, on a runway at the A.L. Mangham Jr. Regional Airport in Nacogdoches.

• 3- by 3-foot piece of metal in a bank parking lot in Nacogdoches, and 1-foot diameter piece of gray metal in front of the courthouse.

• Curved piece of metal, about 5 feet in diameter, in highway median in Anderson County, west of Nacogdoches.

• 7- to 8-foot door-like fragment and a piece of debris resembling part of a windshield found in Cherokee County.

• Dented metal object about the size of a beach ball in the front yard of a home in Bronson, southeast of Nacogdoches near the Louisiana line. The object has bolts and nodules attached.

• 3-foot-by-3-foot cylindrical object at National Guard Armory in Nacogdoches.

Louisiana

• Smoldering bundle of wires in a front yard in Shreveport.

• Compact-car sized piece reported splashing into Toledo Bend Reservoir on Texas-Louisiana state line.

The Associated Press

Published February 1, 2003

Text of a statement from NASA after the loss of communication Saturday with the space shuttle Columbia:

A space shuttle contingency has been declared in mission control Houston as a result of the loss of communication with the Space Shuttle Columbia at approximately 9 a.m. EST Saturday as it descended toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. It was scheduled to touch down at 9:16 am EST. Communication and tracking of the shuttle was lost at 9 a.m. EST at an altitude of about 203,000 feet in the area above north-central Texas. At the time communications were lost, the shuttle was traveling approximately 12,500 miles per hour (MACH 18). No communication and tracking information were received in mission control after that time.

Search and rescue teams in the Dallas-Forth Worth and in portions of East Texas have been alerted. Any debris that is located in the area that may be related to the space shuttle contingency should be avoided and may be hazardous as a result of toxic propellants used aboard the shuttle. The location of any possible debris should immediately reported to local authorities.

Flight controllers in Mission Control have secured all information, notes and data pertinent to today's entry and landing by space shuttle Columbia and continue to methodically proceed through contingency plans. More information will be released as it becomes available.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

By MARCIA DUNN

.c The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated in flames over Texas on Saturday minutes before it was to land in Florida. TV video showed what appeared to be falling debris, as NASA declared an emergency and warned residents to beware of falling objects.

Six Americans and Israel's first astronaut were on board.

In north Texas, people reported hearing ``a big bang'' at about 9 a.m., the same time all radio and data communication with the shuttle was lost.

Television stations showed what appeared to be flaming debris falling through the sky, and NASA warned Texas residents to beware of any falling objects. NASA also announced that search and rescue teams were being mobilized in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

Inside Mission Control, flight controllers hovered in front of their computers, staring at the screens. The wives, husbands and children of the astronauts who had been waiting at the landing strip were gathered together by NASA and taken to secluded place.

``A contingency for the space shuttle has been declared,'' Mission Control repeated over and over as no word or any data came from Columbia.

In 42 years of U.S. human space flight, there had never been an accident during the descent to Earth or landing. On Jan. 28, 1986, space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.

On Jan. 16, shortly after Columbia lifted off, a piece of insulating foam on its external fuel tank came off and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle. Leroy Cain, the lead flight director in Mission Control, assured reporters Friday that engineers had concluded that any damage to the wing was considered minor and posed no safety hazard.

Columbia had been aiming for a landing at 9:16 a.m. Saturday.

It was at an altitude of 207,000 feet over north-central Texas at a 9 a.m., traveling at 12,500 mph when Mission Control lost contact and tracking data.

Gary Hunziker in Plano said he saw the shuttle flying overhead. ``I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it,'' he told The Associated Press. ``I just assumed they were chase jets.''

``I was getting ready to go out and I heard a big bang and the windows shook in the house,'' Ferolito told The AP. ``I thought it was a sonic boom.''

Security had been tight for the 16-day scientific research mission because of the presence of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut.

Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's launch, but also for its planned landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said it had no immediate comment.

Columbia's crew had completed 80-plus scientific research experiments during their time in orbit.

Just in the last week, NASA observed the anniversary of its only two other space tragedies, the Challenger explosion, which killed all seven astronauts on board, and Apollo space craft fire that killed three on Jan. 27, 1967.

02/01/03 10:11 EST

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.

NASA vows to find cause of shuttle disaster

Saturday, February 1, 2003 Posted: 9:59 PM EST (0259 GMT)

Investigators bow their heads in prayer before moving human remains found in a debris field in Hemphill, Texas.  (They found a torso, leg, and head - but not the rest of the body)

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Human remains found in a field in Texas late Saturday are being treated as if they are those of some of the seven astronauts who perished aboard space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated nearly 40 miles above the Earth.

Along with the remains, a charred NASA patch and a flight helmet were found on a rural road in Hemphill, east of Nacogdoches, Texas, according to The Associated Press. (Full story)

FBI agents in Texas are helping local authorities recover shuttle debris, FBI Dallas field office spokeswoman Lori Bailey told CNN.

Streaking through the atmosphere at 18 times the speed of sound, Columbia disintegrated Saturday morning about 15 minutes before its scheduled landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Disaster timeline)

Those killed on the ill-fated shuttle flight were commander Rick D. Husband; pilot William C. McCool; payload commander Michael P. Anderson; mission specialists David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark; and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

"Columbia's lost. There are no survivors," a grim-faced President Bush later said in an address to the American people. "These astronauts knew the dangers and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life." (Full story)

With their voices sometimes threatening to break, NASA officials vowed they would find the cause of the disaster so their colleagues' sacrifice would not be in vain.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, assisted by military forces from Fort Hood, Texas, have begun collecting debris from Columbia. People were urged not to go near the debris because it could contain toxic substances from the shuttle fuel.

To assist the recovery effort, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibited aircraft from flying below 3,000 feet in an area 160 miles long and 40 miles wide extending from Cedar Creek, Texas to Fort Polk, Louisiana. The FAA also urged pilots and airlines to be alert to a debris cloud in the area -- 95 miles long and more than 22 miles wide -- that could create a "visibility issue" for pilots.

Witnesses in Texas reported debris falling from the sky, accompanied by a cascade of thunder.

"When it got nearer, we could see flecks or pieces coming off of it," said Linda Steed, who lives near Nacogdoches, Texas. She said the sound "reverberated" for several minutes, "like a rolling thunder."

"I'm devastated. It's unbelievable. It makes me so sad," she said. (Witness reports)

Heat-detecting weather radar showed a bright red streak moving across the wide Texas sky.

Reports of charred debris stretched from Corsicana, southeast of Dallas, into Louisiana, and could turn up as far east as Arkansas and as far west as Arizona and New Mexico. More on debris found)

Officials asked anyone who finds shuttle debris to call (800) 525-5555.

Questions raised about foam piece that fell during launch

Even as they mourn for their seven friends and colleagues killed in the shuttle disaster, NASA has begun the search for answer as to why Columbia broke into pieces.

"My promise to the crew and to the crew families is that the investigation that we have just launched will find the cause, we'll fix it and then we'll move on. We can't let their sacrifice be in vain," said NASA associate Administrator Bill Readdy, a veteran of two shuttle flights. (Transcript)

Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore said the first indication of trouble was loss of temperature sensors on the left wing. "They were followed seconds and minutes later by several other problems, including loss of tire pressure indications on the left main gear and then indications of excessive structural heating."

Officials said they will take another look at a piece of foam that came off during takeoff.

The fact that the foam struck the left wing, site of some of the sensors that failed Saturday, means that the incident will need to be investigated further, NASA chief flight director Milt Heflin said.

But Dittemore cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying what looks like "the smoking gun" many times turns "out not even to be close."

"Is that the smoking gun?" he said. "It is not. We don't know enough about it. A lot more analysis and evidence needs to come to the table." (More on investigation)

An administration official said the shuttle's altitude made it "highly unlikely" it fell victim to a terrorist act. FBI officials also quickly discounted the possibility of foul play or terrorism.

Space shuttle flights have been put on hold until NASA can learn what caused the disaster. NASA says the international space station, where two astronauts and a cosmonaut remain, has enough supplies to last the crew until June.

The next shuttle flight had been scheduled for March 1.

Columbia is the oldest of NASA's shuttle fleet, first launched in 1981. It was on its 28th mission. The shuttle underwent an extensive, 17-month overhaul that began in September 1999. (Columbia history)

It rejoined the shuttle fleet in February 2001 and flew its first mission after the upgrades in March 2002.

Columbia was lost less than a week after the anniversaries of two other deadly space program disasters -- the 17th anniversary of the explosion of the shuttle Challenger on January 28 and the 36th anniversary of a launchpad fire that killed three Apollo astronauts January 27. (Challenger disaster)

Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved.

Peter Beaumont

Sunday February 2, 2003

The Observer

Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.

In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'.

During his last 11 years at Nasa, Nelson served as a mission operations evaluator for proposed advanced space transportation projects. He was on the initial design team for the space shuttle. He participated in every shuttle upgrade until his retirement.

Listing a series of mishaps with shuttle missions since 1999, Nelson warned in his letter that Nasa management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident. Since 1999 the vehicle had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems:

· 1999 - Columbia's launch was delayed by a hydrogen leak and Discovery was grounded with damaged wiring, contaminated engine and dented fuel line;

· January 2000 - Endeavor was delayed because of wiring and computer failures;

· August 2000 - inspection of Columbia revealed 3,500 defects in wiring;

· October 2000 - the 100th flight of the shuttle was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and concerns with the external tank;

· April 2002 - a hydrogen leak forced the cancellation of the Atlantis flight;

· July 2002 - the inspector general reported that the shuttle safety programme was not properly managed;

· August 2002 - the shuttle launch system was grounded after fuel line cracks were discovered.

White House officials rejected Nelson's plea for a moratorium. He tried to talk again to Nasa's administration about his worries in October but was again rebuffed.

Yesterday Nelson told The Observer that he feared the Columbia disaster was the culmination of 'disastrous mismanagement' by Nasa's most senior officials and would inevitably lead to the moratorium he was calling for.

'I became concerned about safety issues in Nasa after Challenger. I think what happened is that very slowly over the years Nasa's culture of safety became eroded.

'But when I tried to raise my concerns with Nasa's new administrator, I received two reprimands for not going through the proper channels, which discouraged other people from coming forward with their concerns. When it came to an argument between a middle-ranking engineer and the astronauts and administration, guess who won.

'One of my biggest complaints has been that we should have been looking for ways to develop crew escape modules, which Nasa has constantly rejected.'

His claims emerged against a background of growing concern over the management of safety issues by Nasa.

They followed similar warnings last April by the former chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, Richard Bloomberg, who said: 'In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as now.'

Bloomberg blamed the deferral or elimination of planned safety upgrades, a diminished workforce as a result of hiring freezes, and an ageing infrastructure for the advisory panel's findings.

His warning echoed earlier concern about key shuttle safety issues. In September 2001 at a Senate hearing into shuttle safety, senators and independent experts warned that budget and management problems were putting astronauts lives at risk. At the centre of concern were claims that a budget overspend of almost $5 billion (£3bn) had led to a culture in Nasa whereby senior managers treated shuttle safety upgrades as optional.

Among those who spoke out were Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who warned: 'I fear that if we don't provide the space shuttle programme with the resources it needs for safety upgrades, our country is going to pay a price we can't bear.

'We're starving Nasa's shuttle budget and thus greatly increasing the chance of a catastrophic loss.'

Although Nasa officials said that improvements were being made they admitted that more needed to be done.

A year earlier, a General Accounting Office report had warned that the loss of experienced engineers and technicians in the space shuttle programme was threatening the safety of future missions just as Nasa was preparing to increase its annual number of launches to build the International Space Station.

The GAO cited internal Nasa documents showing 'workforce reductions are jeopardising Nasa's ability to safely support the shuttle's planned flight rate'.

Space agency officials discovered in late 1999 that many employees didn't have the necessary skills to properly manage avionics, mechanical engineering and computer systems, according to the GAO report.

The GAO assembled a composite portrait of the shuttle programme's workforce that showed twice as many workers over 60 years of age than under 30. It assessed that the number of workers then nearing retirement could jeopardise the programme's ability to transfer leadership roles to the next generation to support the higher flight rate necessary to build the space station.

TIME science correspondent Jeffrey Kluger examines the possible causes and consequences of the Columbia disaster

Saturday, Feb. 01, 2003

Seven astronauts, including the first Israeli in space, were lost Saturday when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart in the skies of Texas. The incident occurred at an altitude of some 200,000 feet, shortly after reentry and 15 minutes before Columbia had been scheduled to land at Cape Canaveral. TIME science correspondent Jeffrey Kluger explains some of the possible causes and consequences of the accident:

TIME.com: What are the possible scenarios that could have caused this disastrous accident on the shuttle's reentry into the Earth's atmosphere?

Jeffrey Kluger: There are three possible scenarios that explain this event. The first, which I believe is the likeliest explanation, would be an aerodynamic structural breakup of the shuttle caused by it rolling at the wrong angle. Remember, after reentry, the shuttle is descending without power, which means astronauts at the controls can't compensate for a loss of attitude by using the engines, they can only do so using the flaps. And that's extremely hard. Astronauts describe piloting the shuttle on reentry as like trying to fly a brick with wings. It's very difficult to operate, and even more so to correct any problems.

A second explanation might be a loss of tiles leading to a burn-through. (The shuttle is covered with heat-resistant tiles to protect the craft and those inside it from burning up in the scorching temperatures caused by the friction of reentry.) But I think that explanation is unlikely, because the tile-loss would have had to have been quite substantial for that to become possible. You'll hear a lot in the next few days about things falling off the shuttle during liftoff. But it often happens that they lose a few tiles, and I'd be surprised if it happened on a scale that could make an accident of this type possible.

The last option is some kind of engine failure leading to fuel ignition. Although the main tanks are mostly empty, there should still be fuel left in the maneuvering tanks. But probably not enough for an explosion that could have caused this breakup. And just in case anybody was wondering, you can almost certainly rule out terrorism as a cause. This incident occurred well above the range of shoulder-fired missiles. And it would probably be easier to sneak a bomb onto Air Force One than to get one onto the shuttle.

TIME.com: So is reentry the Achilles heel of the shuttle program?  

JK: No, the Achilles heel has always been liftoff, and the dangers posed by massive fuel load involved. Reentry has, of course, always been a difficult part of the space program. But this is, in fact, our first fatal accident on reentry. Apollo 13 is remembered as our most difficult ever reentry, but the ship and crew survived. The Soviets lost a crew on reentry in 1970 after an oxygen leak that caused the cosmonauts to suffocate on the way down. Reentry is a very difficult process, but the Russians mastered it in 1961 and we did the same a few years later.

TIME.com: Are shuttle crews trained to respond to the scenarios you've described?

JK: Yes, they're trained to deal with loss of attitude on reentry, and a range of other emergencies. But astronauts are not trained to deal with situations that result in certain death, because that would be a bit like training for what you might do if your car went over a cliff — in some situations there simply isn't anything you can do. One irony, though, is that NASA hadn't trained astronauts to deal with the sort of quadruple failure that occurred in Apollo 13, because they assumed that such a scenario would result in certain death. But the astronauts survived.

TIME.com: What are the immediate implications for the space program of Saturday's disaster?

JK: Following the precedent of the Challenger disaster in 1986, it's unlikely that NASA will undertake any further shuttle missions or any other manned space flights for the next two years. One immediate problem, though, is the International Space Station, which currently has a crew of three on board. They might consider one further flight to bring that crew home — the other option would be for them to return aboard a Russian Soyuz craft, which isn't the most comfortable or the safest ride. Beyond that, however, the space station is likely to be left unoccupied for a long time. NASA won't want to use the shuttle again until it can establish the cause of today's accident, and fix it. Now that we've lost two shuttles out of a fleet of five, it's even conceivable that the shuttle won't fly again. The shuttle was built as a space truck, and then the International Space Station was built to give it something to do. Both programs are likely to suffer as a result of this disaster.

According to a recording released of the last minutes of Columbia by NASA, Columbia's radio operator did not seem to know that anything was wrong until a split second before disaster struck. The radio operator's last words were "Roger ... uh!", which shows how unsuspecting the crew were. This suggests that (a) the crew were not as observant of the shuttle's flight performance as they should have been, and (b) they did not have immediate access to the temperature and other data monitored by sensors placed all over the craft, in spite of the data being radioed back to Mission Control. There was something very wrong there, in that way.

John W.

NASA Warns Public Not to Sell Debris

By PAM EASTON

.c The Associated Press

NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) - NASA warned members of the public Sunday against  trying to sell purported Columbia debris on eBay, as local law enforcement agencies struggled to cordon off and protect the hundreds of pieces of wreckage.

``People should not be collecting that at all. It's all government property,'' said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham.

Hours after the shuttle broke up Saturday over Texas, raining smoking debris over the countryside, listings for pieces began appearing on the Internet auction site. The items were quickly removed by eBay.

Buckingham said he was stunned.

``We live in an evil world, and there are people that will do those types of things,'' he said at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA does not know whether the items are authentic, but ``even someone pretending to sell something that came from Columbia is still bad,'' Buckingham said.

The range of the debris field - hundreds of square miles - strained the resources of sheriffs and police officers. Officers used horses, four-wheel-drive vehicles and satellite tracking devices to search for pieces, and then had to find ways to protect them until they were collected for analysis.

Some looting was reported in Nacogdoches County, where dozens of pieces of debris have been found, Sheriff Thomas Kerss said. The FBI was investigating, he said, but there were no immediate arrests.

No injuries were reported when the debris smashed through a roof, splashed into a reservoir and dropped amid farms, homes and businesses.

However, Sue Kennedy, emergency management coordinator for Nacogdoches County, said 70 people had gone to two hospitals because they had touched debris and were worried. NASA has warned members of the public not to touch any of the debris because it may contain toxic substances.

Across the city of Nacogdoches and the surrounding piney woods, residents found chunks of debris. A small tank rested on a runway. A steel rod with silver bolts was roped off behind yellow police tape in a yard. A piece of metal rested in a bank parking lot.

Debris covered a terrain that ranged from the urban prairie flatlands near Dallas to the hilly pine woods of Louisiana, mostly turning up in tiny blue-collar towns that survive on farming and timber. A piece of tile fell within 75 miles of President Bush's ranch in Crawford.

In Hemphill, near the Louisiana state line, hospital employee Mike Gibbs reported finding what appeared to be a charred torso, thigh bone and skull on a rural road near what appeared to be other debris. Billy Smith, an emergency coordinator for three East Texas counties, confirmed the find.

``I wouldn't want anybody seeing what I saw,'' Gibbs said. ``It was pretty gruesome.''

On a farm, also in Sabine County, two boys found a charred human leg, The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday. ``From the hip to the foot, it's all there, scorched from the fire,'' said their father, Bob White.

Debris has been tracked in a 500-square-mile area but could be spread over a region three times that, said James Kroll, director of the Emergency Geospacial Mapping Center at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.

Jim Stutzman of Nacogdoches - 135 miles northeast of Houston - found a 9-inch long, 2-inch wide piece of metal in his yard. ``It has heat burns, melted metal and some of the grass burned into it when it fell,'' he said.

Debris found in San Augustine County about 140 miles northeast of Houston included a charred astronaut's patch and a flight helmet.

Debris also fell in western Louisiana, including a smoldering bundle of wires in a Shreveport front yard and pieces that reportedly dropped into Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas line. One of the pieces that fell into the reservoir was the size of a compact car, said Sheriff Tom Maddox.

NASA phone number for people who find debris: 281-483-3388.

02/02/03 13:53 EST

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press

Sat February 1, 2003 03:24 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Immediate popular reaction in Baghdad on Saturday to the loss of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew -- including the first Israeli in space -- was that it was God's retribution.

"We are happy that it broke up," government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.

"God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said.

Iraqis are braced for a possible U.S.-led war to rid their country of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons it may possess. Iraq denies it has such weapons.

Car mechanic Mohammed Jaber al-Tamini noted Israeli air force Colonel Ilan Ramon was among the dead when the shuttle broke up over the southwestern United States 16 minutes before its scheduled landing.

The 48-year-old Israeli astronaut was a fighter pilot in the Israeli air force. He was the youngest pilot in a team that bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. Israel said the reactor was intended to develop nuclear weapons.

"Israel launched an aggression on us when it raided our nuclear reactor without any reason, now time has come and God has retaliated to their aggression," Tamini said.

There were no such signs of jubilation over the shuttle disaster in any of the Palestinian territories. The official response from the Palestinians was one of condolence.

"President (Yasser) Arafat and the Palestinian Authority offer their condolences to the six American families and the Israeli family who lost their loved ones in the catastrophe," Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and spokesman, told Reuters.

Erekat said Arafat had sent President Bush a message of condolences over the loss of the NASA space agency's shuttle. The United States, Israel's closest ally, is the chief Middle East peace broker.

Pics Show Shuttle Left Wing Damaged On Lift-Off

From IZAKOVIC

dragutin.izakovic@ri.tel.hr

2-2-3

Here is a link to thread on Timebomb2000.com that contains 6 still shots that were captured from video posted at Florida Today site.

They show a chunk of insulation that broke off the external fuel tank, apparently of a size of a concrete block or larger, hitting a left wing at the bottom, and producing a huge cloud of the dust whose size was 1/3 to 1/2 of the size of the wing itself.

Video grabs by 'Rattlehead' as posted on message board Timebomb2000.com

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?s=459fa3f2b5f6b43a4c0073cf2a06 5b7f&threadid=57121

Video (Flash required) http://www.floridatoday.com/columbia/debrisvideo.htm

It was reported on NASA news conference yesterday that on the re-entry, during a period of several minutes, 8 thermal and pressure sensors at that area went down, off the scale, while the shuttle was still performing well.

Then the shuttle started to break apart.

The flight was doomed from the launch and NASA knew it. They cold do nothing about it.

At the same conference it was said that similar chunk of insulation broke off during the precedent launch. This they knew also.

IZAKOVIC http://www.deepspace4.com

Florida Today article on left wing investigation: http://www.floridatoday.com/columbia/columbiastory2A42501A.htm

Report: NASA Removed Advisers Who Warned on Safety

Mon February 3, 2003 09:03 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After an expert panel warned that its space shuttles were facing safety troubles if the agency's budget was not raised, NASA removed five of the panel's nine members and two consultants in what some of them said was a move to suppress their criticism, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The incident was recalled after the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas on Saturday, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

Retired Adm. Bernard Kauderer, was so upset at the firings that he quit NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a group of experts charged with monitoring safety at the space agency, the newspaper said.

NASA conceded the individuals were forced out, but told the Times it changed the charter of the group so that new members who were younger and more skilled could be added. "It had nothing to do with shooting the messenger," a NASA spokeswoman told the newspaper.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said he was surprised by the report and that each member of the panel head served out his full term.

"There's no abnormality I'm aware of, but I'll certainly look into it and see if we can satisfy ourselves that there's no other intrusion involved," he told CNN.

The panel's most recent report, which came out last March and included analyzes by the six departed members, warned that work on long-term shuttle safety "had deteriorated," the article said. Tight budgets, the panel report said, were forcing an emphasis on short-term planning and adding to a backlog of planned improvements.

"I have never been as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now," Dr. Richard D. Blomberg, the panel's chairman, told Congress in April. "All of my instincts suggest that the current approach is planting the seeds for future danger," the Times reported.

His worry was "not for the present flight or the next or perhaps the one after that." He added, "One of the roots of my concern is that nobody will know for sure when the safety margin has been eroded too far," the newspaper said.

Members of Congress who heard testimony from the panel last spring told the Times that they would re-examine whether budget constraints had undermined safety, but several said they doubted it.

O'Keefe said Blomberg "was concerned about the future process at that time, of exactly what would be the upgrades as well as the safety modifications necessary. We took those ideas aboard."

President Bush will propose a nearly $470 million boost in NASA's budget for fiscal 2004, an administration official said on Sunday, promising investigators would look into whether past cutbacks played any part in the Columbia disaster.

By Frank J. Murray

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Columbia's crew was aware through most of its 16-day flight that debris that hit the underside of the space shuttle's left wing at launch posed a danger, but it never mentioned it during public transmissions, NASA said yesterday.

NASA officials yesterday abandoned the theory of insulation foam hitting wing tiles as the cause of the disaster. Earlier this week, NASA had called the launch mishap "the leading candidate" for what caused the shuttle to break apart upon re-entry to the atmosphere.

Eliezer Wolferman, father of Israeli astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon, said he was told that the crew had 60 to 90 seconds to react to the shuttle's re-entry problem before the craft shattered.

But nothing said by spacecraft commander Col. Rick D. Husband matched Apollo 13 astronaut James A. Lovell Jr.'s classic, "Houston, we've got a problem." This time, Houston declared the problem, and a calm "Roger" was all that came back from Columbia.

The astronauts knew of the potential for "anomalies" during re-entry, but the crew said nothing about it, even during the final 10 minutes, when the astronauts would have been aware that the spacecraft was pulling to the left.

"Of course they're attentive. They're focused on it," said a NASA worker in Houston.

Col. Husband "had a lot to do [during re-entry]. I think it would be natural to ask questions if he was uncomfortable, but I think he was satisfied with the information," shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore told reporters yesterday.

Remains of all seven astronauts were received with honors yesterday at the specialized Dover Air Force Base mortuary in Delaware.

Other officials said the crew had confidence in what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration called "the engineering truth" — that the launch-day collision would not cause a fatal accident. Yesterday Mr. Dittemore re-adopted that theory.

"We don't believe it's this chunk of foam. It's got to be something else that we don't know about yet," Mr. Dittemore said, holding high a suitcase-sized block of foam during a briefing at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"As you focus your attention on the debris, we're focusing our attention on what we didn't see," he told reporters as he distributed the 16-by-20-by-6-inch foam blocks so they could get a feel for the size and mass of the material involved.

"Right now it just does not make sense to us that a piece of debris could be the root cause for the loss of Columbia and its crew. There's got to be another reason," Mr. Dittemore said, suggesting that the shuttle disaster was caused by "another event" that escaped detection.

He did not say what that other event might have been as he contradicted his own early suggestions that the hardened foam broke loose and dislodged protective tiles from a vulnerable spot beneath the wing.

Mr. Dittemore, in Houston, and his boss, Deputy Associate Administrator Michael Kostelnik, in Washington, rejected published reports that undetected ice that somehow became embedded in the foam made it a more potent force than engineers assumed in declaring it was not a threat to the spacecraft.

"It might be obvious to some where the problem occurred. It's certainly not clear to us," said Gen. Kostelnik, who is retired from the Air Force.

Both men said the crew was kept informed of engineering discussions about the left wing.

"Our policy is we tell the crew everything. We don't hold anything back from the commander on the scene," said Mr. Dittemore, who said the shuttle commander hears the facts and rationale for a decision but would be too busy to discuss it by radio or in television interviews.

"You would feel comfortable, and you would get on with the work at hand, because he was a busy camper. He had a lot to do. I think it would be natural to ask questions if he was uncomfortable, but I think he was satisfied with the information," Mr. Dittemore said.

He said Col. Husband would have known fellow astronauts were involved in the assessment of the potential damage. Mr. Dittemore's comment was the first time NASA has disclosed that astronauts were involved in the evaluation. The decision was made that the incident posed no risk to the Columbia's safe return.

"He knew that his people, his astronaut friends, were involved in the analysis," Mr. Dittemore said. "We also give him the opportunity to talk to the ground. If he doesn't think he has enough information, we would be glad to provide him anything he desired."

"Nothing was kept from them. They knew," Gen. Kostelnik said.

Despite the daily engineering reports evaluating the insulation's impact on heat-shield tiles in a particularly vulnerable spot under the left wing, there is no evidence that Col. Husband ever questioned the finding.

His last radio transmission acknowledged the NASA ground controller who didn't understand Col. Husband's reply to a warning that temperatures in his left wheel well were rising fast.

"Roger, uh, buh ..."

From there, only static was heard, along with the steady voice of a Houston controller, at first confident that the silence was caused by normal electronic interference during the heat of re-entry.

"Columbia, Houston. Comm check," the controller said repeatedly. There was no further reply.

NASA officials rejected suggestions that ice reinforced the relatively fragile foam, adding weight that increased the mass when the insulation broke loose from the fuel tank at more than 1,200 miles per hour.

"I don't think it's ice. I don't think there's an embedded-ice question here," Mr. Dittemore said.

"Ice was not an issue on this launch on that day," Gen. Kostelnik said. In discussing the problem, however, he focused on the current weather and said there was no rain around launch day.

Gen. Kostelnik rejected new suggestions that a month of rain caused ice to build up within a particularly thick portion of fuel-tank insulating foam.

In another development yesterday, Mr. Dittemore rejected as "impossible" the claim by astronaut David M. Brown's brother that the crew was so concerned about the damaged left wing that astronauts took photos of it. The claim was relayed by Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, in a Senate floor speech Tuesday. Mr. Dittemore said the wing is not visible from the shuttle windows.

HSF - STS 107 CREW INTERVIEWS

Profiles of Space Shuttle Columbia Crew

FOX News | 2/01/03 | AP

Commander Rick Husband has just one other spaceflight under his belt and already he's flying as commander. That's a rarity.

"I think a lot of it has to do with being in the right place at the right time, for starters," says Husband, 45, an Air Force colonel from Amarillo, Texas.

The former test pilot was selected as an astronaut in 1994 on his fourth try. He made up his mind as a child that that was what he was going to do with his life.

"It's been pretty much a lifelong dream and just a thrill to be able to get to actually live it out," he says.

Another lifelong passion: singing.

Husband, a baritone, has been singing in church choirs for years. He used to sing in barbershop quartets, back during his school days.

------

Pilot William McCool says one of the most nerve-racking parts of training for this scientific research mission was learning to draw blood -- from others.

Columbia's two pilots are exempted from invasive medical tests in orbit, like blood draws. That means he and his commander have to draw blood from their crewmates.

McCool felt bad practicing on NASA volunteers.

"I didn't want to inflict pain," he recalls. "We weren't really gathering science, so everything that they were going through was for my benefit, and I guess I felt bad a little bit."

The 41-year-old Navy commander, a father of three sons, graduated second in his 1983 class at the Naval Academy. He went on to test pilot school and became an astronaut in 1996. This is his first spaceflight.

McCool grew up in Lubbock, Texas.

------

Payload commander Michael Anderson loves flying, both in aircraft and spacecraft, but he dislikes being launched.

It's the risk factor. "There's always that unknown," he says.

Anderson, 43, the son of an Air Force man, grew up on military bases.

"I was always fascinated by science-fiction shows, shows like 'Star Trek' and 'Lost in +Space+,"' he says. "And going out of your house and looking up and seeing jets fly by, that seemed like another very exciting thing to do. So I knew I wanted to fly airplanes, and I knew I wanted to do something really exciting, and I always had a natural interest in science.

"So it all kind of came together at a very young age, and I thought being an astronaut would be the perfect job."

Anderson was flying for the Air Force when NASA chose him in 1994 as one of only a handful of black astronauts. He traveled to Russia's Mir space station in 1998.

He is now a lieutenant colonel and in charge of Columbia's dozens of science experiments. His home is Spokane, Wash.

------

When Kalpana Chawla emigrated to the United States from India in the 1980s, she wanted to design aircraft. The space program was the furthest thing from her mind.

"That would be too far-fetched," says the 41-year-old engineer. But "one thing led to another," and she was chosen as an astronaut in 1994 after working at NASA's Ames Research Center and Overset Methods Inc. in Northern California.

On her only other spaceflight, in 1996, Chawla made a pair of mistakes that sent a science satellite tumbling out of control. Two other astronauts had to go out on a spacewalk to capture it.

"I stopped thinking about it after trying to figure out what are the lessons learned, and there are so many," she says. "After I had basically sorted that out, I figured it's time to really look at the future and not at the past."

She realizes some may see this flight as her chance to redeem herself.

------

David Brown is a Navy novelty: He's both a pilot and a doctor. He's also probably the only NASA astronaut to have worked as a circus performer.

Brown was a varsity gymnast at the College of William and Mary when he got a phone call one day: Would he like to join the circus? So during the summer of 1976, he was an acrobat, tumbler, stilt walker and 7-foot unicycle rider.

"What I really learned from that, and transfers directly to what I'm doing on this crew, is kind of the team work and the safety and the staying focused, even at the end of a long day when you're tired and you're doing some things that may have some risk to them."

He joined the Navy after his medical internship and went on to fly the A-6E Intruder and F-18. His current rank is captain.

NASA chose him as an astronaut in 1996. This is his first spaceflight; he will help with all the experiments.

Brown, 46, is taking up a flag from Yorktown High School in Arlington, Va., his alma mater, that another graduate took up Mount Everest. "I'm going to get it a little bit higher up, but I won't have to walk as far to get it there."

------

Laurel Clark, a Navy physician who worked undersea, likens the numerous launch delays to a marathon in which the finish line keeps moving out five miles.

"You've got to slow back down and maintain a pace," she says.

The 41-year-old Clark was a diving medical officer aboard submarines and then a naval flight surgeon. She became an astronaut in 1996.

Her family, including her 8-year-old son, worry sometimes about her being an astronaut. But she tells everyone "what an aggressive safety program we have."

"To me, there's a lot of different things that we do during life that could potentially harm us and I choose not to stop doing those things," she notes. "They've all come to accept that it's what I want to do."

She will help with Columbia's science experiments, which should have flown almost two years ago.

Her home is Racine, Wis.

------

Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force, is the first Israeli to be launched into space.

"For Israel and for the Jewish community, it's something beyond being in space," he says. "It's a very symbolic mission."

His mother and grandmother survived the Auschwitz death camp, and his father was a Zionist who fought for Israel's statehood alongside his own father. The astronaut also fought for his country, in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Lebanon War in 1982.

"I was born in Israel as an Israeli, so I'm kind of a dream fulfillment for all this last-century generation," he says.

Ramon, 48, served as a fighter pilot during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, flying F-16s and F-4s. He was promoted in 1994 to lead Israel's department of operational requirement for weapon development and acquisition. He was selected as his country's first astronaut in 1997 and moved to Houston in 1998 to train for a shuttle flight.

He and his wife, Rona, have four children and call Tel Aviv home.

NOTE: Ramon's name seems to mean  RA=SUN -  MON=MOON

How ironic that the space capsule crashed in the area of Palestine, Texas

A Flame Ball Named Kelly

Flame balls onboard the space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) have been doing some strange and wonderful things.

January 31, 2003: They're creatures of space: tiny flames that curl into balls and flit around like UFOs. They burn using almost no fuel at all, dim and often hard to see. Yet they have plenty of personality.

"[I'm calling this one] Howard," deadpanned astronaut Dave Brown onboard the space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) this week. He had been filming the tiny flames for some time, watching them roam around their test chamber in a lifelike search of food (fuel), when the idea popped into his head. These flame balls needed names.

"After that everyone started naming them," says USC engineering professor Paul Ronney who designed the experiment. "It was fun. It also helped us keep track of some of the strange things we saw." For example, two flame balls flew around in a spiral pattern like DNA. "We called them Crick and Watson."

It's more than just fun, though. These flame ball experiments--called SOFBALL, short for Structure of Flame Balls at Low Lewis number--are serious investigations into the physics of fire.

Unlike flames on Earth, which have a tear drop shape caused by air rising in a gravitational field, flames in space break apart into spheres a few millimeters in diameter. A typical floating flame ball produces 1 to 2 watts of thermal power--much less than, say, a 50 watt birthday candle. "We created some flame balls on STS-107 that emitted only 0.5 watts--a record low," he says.

Flame balls are "lean" burners; they don't need much fuel to keep going. Engineers would love to duplicate their efficiency in the engines of automobiles, "but first we have to understand how flame balls work," says Ronney.

That's the goal of SOFBALL.

SOFBALL is a chamber about the size of an office trash can filled with combustible gases: "a little bit of hydrogen or methane (the fuel), some oxygen (the oxidant), and a lot of inert gas (e.g., helium or nitrogen) to dilute the mixture until it is barely flammable," says Ronney. The experiment rides in the shuttle's cargo bay inside a rack called the Combustion Module. Astronauts simply press a button to spark the mixture and voila ... flame balls. Their temperature, brightness, heat loss, and the composition of their gaseous byproducts are all monitored by built-in instruments. SOFBALL was built and tested at NASA's Glenn Research Center under the guidance of project scientist Karen Weiland and project manager Ann Over.

Above: The SOFBALL Experiment Mounting Structure (EMS) has a built-in spark ignitor, temperature sensors, a radiometer and more.

This is SOFBALL's second flight; the first was in 1997, also onboard Columbia (STS-83). In those days the experiment ran for only 8 minutes. "We didn't think flame balls could last more than a few minutes," explains Ronney, "but we were wrong. Many of them were still burning when SOFBALL's control computer automatically ended the test. We needed more time."

So, during STS-107, SOFBALL has operated for periods as long as three hours. And "we've seen some extraordinary things," says Ronney.

Crick and Watson are examples. Ronney says he has no idea what would make a flame ball fly around in a spiral. "Flame balls move for two reasons," he explains. "First, when they exhaust the fuel in their vicinity, they drift toward regions with more. They follow the fuel like a little organism. Second, they can drift due to slight accelerations of the shuttle." Neither of these effects would produce a corkscrew flight path.

Left: A spiraling flame ball. Image credit: Paul Ronney and the crew of the space shuttle Columbia (STS-107). [more video]

Howard is another example of something Ronney had never seen before. "Howard was suicidal," he says. Instead of following the fuel like a flame ball should, Howard headed straight for the walls of the chamber--a fuel-poor region. "He promptly went out. We saw several more flame balls like this, too." It's another mystery.

The SOFBALL experiment also produced the biggest and the smallest flame balls ever recorded--ranging from 2 mm to 15 mm across. "We named one of the biggest ones 'Zeldovich' after the Russian physicist who predicted flame balls in 1944." A well-meaning astronaut named one of the flame balls 'Paul Ronney,' "but it turned out to be small and short-lived--a wimp," Ronney laughed.

Oscillating flame balls were another first. "About 15 years ago John Buckmaster at the University of Illinois and Guy Joulin of CNRS in Poitiers, France, predicted that flame balls about to run out of fuel should oscillate. You've probably seen something like this in low burning candle flames, which jump up and down in a rhythmic pattern just before they go out. We had never observed these oscillations in flame balls before, but now we have--in two flame balls named Buckmaster and Joulin." The period and duration of the pulsations reveal a great deal about the inner workings of flame balls, adds Ronney. It's a very important result.

Ronney's favorite flame ball, though, is Kelly. "Before the mission began I said I wanted to send a flame ball around the world. Kelly almost made it." The shuttle circles Earth once every 90 minutes; Kelly burned for 81 minutes--the longest-lasting flame ball ever recorded.

"Kelly's experience is a fascinating example of group dynamics among flame balls," says Ronney. "She was created, one of nine flame balls, in a gaseous mixture of hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur hexaflouride (the inert filler). All the others began drifting around the chamber, looking for food, competing with one other, while Kelly remained motionless at the center. Before long, the others were exhausted; they had drifted too close to the walls and winked out. Kelly was left all alone with a chamber full of fuel."

"It pays to be patient," notes Ronney. And he should know. Ronney discovered flame balls in 1984 in a drop tower at NASA-Glenn in Ohio where the weightless lifetime of a flame ball is only a few seconds. He's been waiting almost 20 years for data like this....

There's a sign in Ronney's office: When the Gods want to punish you they answer your prayers. "It's going to take us years to analyze all these results!"

He's delighted.

Editor's note: Astronauts ignited and filmed 55 flame balls during the STS-107 mission (which is still ongoing as this story is being published); 33 of them received names after trend-setter Dave Brown christened one of his "Howard."

Click HERE for photos and videos

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/columbia_nosecone_030204.html

Searchers Find Shuttle Nose Cone in Texas

By Joel Anderson

Associated Press

05 February 2003

HEMPHILL, Texas (AP) -- Investigators have made an important discovery in their hunt for rubble from space shuttle Columbia, locating the spacecraft's nose cone in a heavily wooded area of eastern Texas.

A crew was to return to the site Tuesday to excavate the cone, which was found partially buried in a hole described by state troopers as 20 feet wide.

"It's basically the front of the nose cone,'' said Warren Zehner, an Environmental Protection Agency senior on-scene coordinator. ``It's reasonably intact.''

The nose cone represents one of the biggest findings to date. Although the search for debris has turned up thousands of tiny shuttle pieces, the cone is one of the largest and most recognizable parts and could potentially provide insight into how the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on Saturday, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

The shattered shuttle was effectively being reconstructed from an area larger than West Virginia. That includes the massive Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana state line, where divers using sonar equipment are searching for what authorities believe is a car-size chunk.

Some 12,000 pieces of debris had been collected in the region by late Monday afternoon. Although the search was grisly at times, with human remains reportedly found at 15 locations in Nacogdoches County alone, law officers were satisfied with the results.

"It was a very, very good day,'' Billy Smith, emergency management coordinator for three Texas counties, said Monday. ``This was probably one of the best days we've had.''

The cone was found a few miles from Hemphill, a town of about 1,200 people that has become a focus of the search. Hemphill is 130 miles northeast of Houston and Johnson Space Center.

State troopers near the site were stationed at a roadway to keep media and others from the area. Embedded in a tree near the nose cone was what appeared to be a black tile.

About 10 searchers emerged from the woods with bags full of debris, including metal objects. They filled a bed of a pickup truck with shuttle fragments.

The EPA, which is overseeing debris collection, has been using an airplane equipped with infrared sensors that can spot fragments that might be tainted with hazardous chemicals.

Using pushpins to mark debris sites, an independent investigative team headed by retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr. and NASA examiners have set up a command post at Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base, where some body parts and shuttle fragments were being collected.

NASA shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said NASA was particularly interested in any pieces that may have fallen from Columbia as far west as New Mexico, Arizona or California. The FBI was checking reports of possible debris in Arizona.

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack,'' Dittemore said, referring to tracking bits of the 6-by-6 inch thermal tiles that covered Columbia. ``But that is not going to keep us from looking for it.''

The recovery effort is daunting due to the size and scope of the debris field. It stretched west to east 380 miles from Eastland, Texas, to Alexandria, La., and north-south 230 miles from Sulphur Springs, Texas, to metropolitan Houston.

Louisiana state police confirmed more than two dozen chunks of debris in 11 different parishes. Authorities recovered a 3-by-4-foot metal panel with small holes from a thicket in Sabine Parish, on the Texas border. Vernon Parish chief deputy Calvin Turner said four chunks of metal were found in the parish

"We'll be finding stuff months down the road. I'd say hunting season is when people will be picking stuff up, or we'll never find it at all,'' Turner said.

Milton Breaux, a house painter from Scott, La., said he and a friend were fishing in a boat at 8 a.m. Saturday morning on the Toledo Bend Reservoir when they heard something hitting the water. He said he heard six to 10 splashes in three or four minutes.

"It made kind of a singing or sizzling sound when it was coming down,'' he said. "What I guess were the smaller things made a sound like a rifle firing when they hit the water. The bigger ones sounded more like a shotgun blast hitting.''

* The Investigation: NASA to Re-Examine Debris Impact from Columbia Launch

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_updateAM_030204.html

The Investigation: NASA to Re-Examine Debris Impact from Columbia Launch

By Jim Banke

Senior Producer, Cape Canaveral Bureau

04 February 2003

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle engineers plan to repeat from scratch their analysis of the damage a piece of falling debris from Columbia's external tank might make on the orbiter's heat protection tiles, program chief Ron Dittemore said Monday.

Captured on film some 80 seconds after the Jan. 16 launch of Columbia, a small chunk of insulating foam could be seen breaking loose of the orange tank and hitting the orbiter’s left wing. This has become the center of attention for the investigation into what happened in the skies high over Texas on Saturday.

Initial studies of the incident during the days following liftoff came to the conclusion that Columbia and its crew were in no grave danger, a fact that was shared with the seven astronauts during the flight.

"The conclusion was that the debris that impacted the vehicle did not represent a threat to the safety of the crew or the vehicle," Dittemore said.

NASA managers have admitted as early as the first press briefing on Saturday that they could have been wrong, and since the link between the falling debris and damage to heat protection tiles followed by loss of vehicle and crew is so great, they want to take another look.

"Although that may, in fact, wind up being the cause -- it may certainly be the leading candidate right now -- we have to go through all the evidence and then rule things out very methodically in order to arrive at the cause," William Readdy, NASA's top spaceflight manager, said Monday.

But first the NASA space community at Johnson Space Center in Houston will take Tuesday off to celebrate the lives of Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, David Brown and Israel's Ilan Ramon -- and to mourn their loss.

"We're going to pause and reflect upon the crew of Columbia, their lives, their contributions, their memory and although we can not stop our investigation and the recovery effort, we will pause in this location to take the time to reflect upon their lives and their sacrifice," Dittemore said.

The private ceremony is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) Tuesday and will be attended by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, dignitaries from Israel, family members of the crew lost in the 1986 Challenger disaster and many others who work at the space center.

President and Mrs. Bush are scheduled to participate. President George Bush senior and his wife Barabara visited JSC on Monday and also took time to speak with the Expedition Six crew aboard the International Space Station.

Another memorial service is planned in Washington, D.C. at the National Cathedral on Thursday, and her