The space agency was able to locate about 40% of the shuttle in the three months of searches * The scanners also found a missing body and a vehicle related to a murder investigation * First official conclusions of the investigation committee: infiltration of gases into the wing through the tiles caused the crash; The members of the committee did not determine what caused the defect in the coating, but they will examine the possibilities
An aerial view of the disaster area immediately after its occurrence. Spot searches will continue (Photo: NASA)
The first official conclusions published last night by the commission of inquiry into the space shuttle Columbia disaster indicate that the shuttle crashed due to the penetration of hot gases through the insulation tiles of the left wing.
The members of the committee did not definitively determine what caused the gases to penetrate through the tiles, but confirmed that the findings presented to them support previous assumptions according to which a piece of insulating foam that hit the wing during takeoff was what ultimately caused the shuttle to crash during the landing attempt on February 1. In the shuttle crash, seven crew members were killed, including the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.
Advertisement "Now we know enough," the chairman of the investigative committee, retired admiral Harold Gehman, said yesterday. "We are at a point where we must focus our efforts," he added. The next phase of the investigation will focus on testing the "foam block theory". The committee will conduct experiments that will simulate the impact of foam blocks on tiles whose composition is the same as that of the shuttle tiles. The researchers will check whether it is possible that the foam, which weighs no more than half a kilogram, but has a speed of 720 km/h, can create a hole in the tiles.
According to Gehman, the assumption that the disaster was caused by damage to the tiles is only a working assumption. "We are careful and do not state that the impact of the foam block caused a hole in the body of the aircraft, because we cannot prove this, although the committee definitely suspects that the foam block had a part in the disaster," he said.
The investigation is expected to last a few more months. Until the publication of the final conclusions of the investigation, the US space shuttle fleet will remain grounded.
NASA: The search for the debris of the "Columbia" has ended
07/05/2003
The American space agency NASA announced yesterday the end of the search for the debris of the space shuttle "Columbia" - about three months after its crash. The operation, which cost 302 million dollars and included more than 30 thousand participants, managed to locate about 40 percent of the spacecraft.
CNN reported that the searches covered an area of almost three million dunams in East Texas and West Louisiana. Finding the most fragments was essential to complete the investigation of the crash that caused the death of the shuttle's seven crew members. The person responsible for collecting the fragments at NASA said that the amount of fragments found was twice as large as what the agency had initially estimated. A targeted search of specific sites will continue from time to time.
The space agency has not yet determined an official cause for the shuttle disaster. The prominent theory is the impact of pieces of foam on the left wing of the spaceship, shortly after takeoff. It is suspected that the shuttle's thermal insulation system was damaged as a result, and during reentry into the atmosphere, hot gases penetrated the impact area and caused the shuttle to rupture.
Today, the people of the American space agency are expected to publish more information from the investigation during a public discussion on the Columbia accident. The researchers will mainly provide data that emerged from the examination of the shuttle's black box, which was found on March 19.
During the massive operation, the searchers for the fragments also found unexpected findings. Among other things, the searchers discovered the body of an elderly man who disappeared from a nursing home, as well as a vehicle related to a murder mystery.
