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Audio tape of shuttle Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0603/13shuttletape.htmlhttp://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0603/13shuttletape.html
Anonymous caller claims she has shuttle tape
By JOHNNY JOHNSON
Cox News Service
NACOGDOCHES, Texas -- To the Sound-Off caller who said they found a mini-cassette from the space shuttle Columbia: NASA is extremely interested in talking to you on a "no-questions-asked" basis.
Earlier this week, The Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel received a recorded message on its anonymous call-in comment and news tip line, Sound-Off, from what sounded to be a middle-aged female claiming to have intimate knowledge of an audio recording that may hold clues as to what went wrong during re-entry, causing the shuttle to break apart over East Texas on Feb. 1.
The Sound-Off message was as follows :
"Could you please give me the shuttle discovery number that I'm supposed to call if I find something? I found a mini-cassette -- (potentially sensitive information has been deleted here) -- and I think this needs to go back to NASA. I need the number please."
That number, 1-866-446-6603 was printed in Thursday's Sound-Off in a response to the caller's inquiry. An additional message appeared on the front page of the Sentinel asking the caller to contact Sentinel Managing Editor Robbie Goodrich at her direct business telephone line at 936-558-3201.
Because of the delicate nature of the claim, Sentinel officials contacted NASA and played the message for NASA engineer Jon Michael Smith, who works in the Columbia recovery office.
After hearing the message, Smith said he believed the call to be authentic and that NASA was extremely interested in talking to this person and getting that tape back.
"Our judgment is that this female is credible," he said.
One of the credibility indicators was the fact that all seven astronauts were equipped with personal mini-cassette recorders for taking notes, according to Smith.
"All seven crew members had a recorder, and we have not found a single one," Smith said. "If they knew things were bad, they would have been talking into those personal recorders."
The Sound-Off caller claimed that she listened to the recording, and that it contains some kind of communication from the astronauts, but Smith said that NASA might be more concerned with the other sounds that the cassette may have captured.
"What we are really interested in are any background noises that may indicate what was going on inside the orbiter," he said.
Dave Whittle, chairman of the NASA Mishap Investigation Team, said that there are two very important aspects to the tape, if it exists. Astronauts might have actually said something that would give investigators a clue as to what went wrong, or specific sounds in the background noise might indicate problems from specific equipment.
"Needless to say, there are some family members who this would be probably be important to," Whittle said. "But it might shatter them if they heard the tape on TV or something like that. We want to treat this very carefully, and we would never release the whole tape for the public to hear."
One of Whittle's main concerns is that if the caller's claim is valid, then playing the tape could actually damage it.
Debris from the Columbia had been exposed to a lot of dirt and dust, and it is possible that those particles could damage important information on the tape.
"If we acquire this tape, we would treat it like an investigation," Whittle said. "We would take the tape out of case set itself to clean it and then play it in that manner."
Whittle said he wanted to make it perfectly clear that NASA is willing to accept the tape on a "no-questions-asked" basis, if necessary.
"If someone volunteers to turn this over to us, we are not going to ask things like how long they have had it and why they didn't turn it in until yesterday," Whittle said. "We just want it back."
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