|
Shuttle image request email dispute { April 1 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63587-2003Mar31.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63587-2003Mar31.html
Engineer Disputed NASA on Seeking Image of Shuttle
E-Mail Contended That Failing to Request Photo of Potential Damage Was 'Bordering on Irresponsible'
By Eric Pianin and Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A09
About a week before the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster, a NASA engineer warned his superiors that failure to seek photographic evidence of suspected damage to the space shuttle's left wing was wrong and "bordering on irresponsible," according to an internal document released by the space agency yesterday.
The warning from shuttle engineer Alan R. Rocha was part of an intense internal debate in the days leading up to the shuttle's fiery disintegration. The debate centered on whether to seek help from the Defense Department or the intelligence community to determine what damage might have been done during liftoff to heat-resistant tiles.
"I must emphasize (again) that severe enough damage . . . combined with the heating and resulting damage to the underlying structure at the most critical location . . . could present potentially grave hazards," Rocha said.
Rocha's warning was contained in an e-mail that was printed out and handed to two superiors, but was not sent electronically. The document was released yesterday by NASA along with hundreds of pages of other internal documents and analyses generated by the Johnson Space Center and contractors.
The shuttle disintegrated as it entered the Earth's atmosphere, and the seven crew members perished. A leading theory is that superheated air burned through the wing in an area where it had been damaged by debris that hit the shuttle during its launch on Jan. 16.
NASA made no public statement of concern about the safety of the shuttle during the flight. Since the disaster, the agency has made a series of disclosures of e-mail traffic in which Rocha and other NASA engineers discussed their worries about the damage and called for photographs to determine the extent of the damage to the wing.
But those concerns were not shared by more senior NSA officials, who relied on analyses of possible debris damage to the left wing that were done by a team from Boeing Co.
William F. Readdy, NASA's associate administrator, disclosed recently that he spurned an opportunity to request a high-priority photograph of the damaged space shuttle during the final days of its mission because he felt the agency had no "extraordinary reason" to request the diversion of the equipment -- described by others as spy satellites -- from their assigned military tasks.
Last week, the U.S. military agreed to a request by NASA to regularly capture detailed satellite images of space shuttles in orbit during future missions. NASA made the request after pointed questioning by members of Congress and independent experts of its decision not to seek such images.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced the agreement with the National Imagery and Mapping Agency "to employ NIMA assets during targets of opportunity" without NASA having to request the imaging.
Rocha's e-mail appeared to have been written in the midst of an intense exchange of views on the possible consequences of the debris impact and NASA engineers' difficulty in assessing the damage from the liftoff videotape.
The problem was first mentioned in internal NASA e-mails on Jan. 17, the day after the launch. In a Jan. 20 e-mail, Rocha said the "imaging folks" estimated the size of the main piece of debris as "20 inch max dimension plus/minus 10 inch," with a "max thickness of 4 inch or so."
On Jan. 21, Rocha summoned NASA, Boeing and United Space Alliance engineers to discuss the debris impact. Afterward, he sent a message to superiors asking, "Can we petition (beg) for outside agency assistance?"
"Without better images it will be very difficult to even bound the problem and intialize thermal, trajectory and structural analyses," Rocha wrote. "Their answers may have a wide spread ranging from acceptable, to not-acceptable, to horrible, and no way to reduce uncertainty."
The next day, Paul Shack, a top shuttle engineer at the Johnson Space Center, e-mailed Rocha, simply noting that Ralph Roe, manager of the shuttle orbiter engineering program at the Space Center, "is not requesting any outside imaging help."
It is not known whether Rocha then wrote his draft "bordering on irresponsible" response. What he sent to Shack, however, was a two-line e-mail simply asking, "Can you tell us more on Roe's negative answer?" There was indication yesterday that Shack responded to that message.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
|
|
