He said the entire recovery effort "is going to take several weeks, maybe into months." "We don't want to find it, but because these folks gave their lives, we really want to recover things as soon as possible," said Sheriff Philip Waller of Polk County, Texas. NASA is also conducting its own investigation and House and Senate panels plan to examine the disaster that killed all seven crew members - commander Rick Husband, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, William McCool and Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut. Officials continue to say there is no evidence of terrorism in the case of the shuttle. who led the Pentagon investigation into the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole - will head a special government commission investigating the cause of the Columbia disaster. … Structurally and performance-wise, we had used it for many years, and had no reason to doubt its capability." It's just different material than the super-lightweight. However, Dittemore said: "There's no concern about the lightweight tank. But a spokesman for Lockheed, the fuel tank manufacturer, said today Columbia actually was using an older version that NASA had begun phasing out in 2000, although he didn't know if there was a difference in the way the insulation was installed. NASA preflight press information said the shuttle was using a new version of the fuel tank, The Associated Press reported. "It's an interesting piece of data that's part of our equation that we're putting in with everything else," Dittemore said. Officials say some evidence may have been destroyed during re-entry, when the shuttle was exposed to temperatures of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Ron Dittemore, the space shuttle program manager, said investigators will look for new clues that might be pulled out of NASA's flight computers - perhaps including data for an additional 32 seconds after communications with the shuttle went silent before the craft broke up.Įven if NASA officials succeed in retrieving the information, determining the cause of Saturday's disaster will not be easy. "It's still in the process of identification."Īnd as authorities continue the grim task of identifying the remains, NASA officials said they hoped they could find clues to determine what destroyed the second space shuttle in 17 years. "We found remains from all the astronauts," Bob Cabana, NASA director of flight crew operations, told reporters tonight. 2, 2003 - One day after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the sky, a NASA official said remains from all seven astronauts had been found while another official voiced hope that hidden data on computers would shed light on what caused the disaster.
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