It Could Show Tile Damage

That grainy USAF picture of the shuttle Columbia, taken from a powerful telescope in New Mexico as the space plane was minutes away from disintegrating upon re-entry, may actually show more than NASA first thought. The Washington Post reports the telescopic photo could give investigators an idea of just how badly Columbia's left wing was damaged and perhaps even indicate the area where heat-resistant tiles were missing.

The picture taken in the last seconds of Columbia's existence shows what may be a vortex of superheated air roiling over the left wing and a section of heat-shield panels missing from the leading edge, the newspaper reported.

All seven astronauts aboard were killed, just 16 minutes before they were to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

One theory has been that debris from the shuttle's external fuel tank knocked off some of the spacecraft's heat-shielding tiles about 80 seconds after launch, allowing superheated gas to burn through the left wing during re-entry.

The photograph may support this theory, the official quoted by the newspaper said.

Fatal Wound?

The Post quotes an official close to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which is charged with finding out why Columbia, NASA'S oldest shuttle, disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, who says a plume trailing behind the shuttle's wing looks like "part of the heated material coming off the aircraft."

Some analysts believe this suggests "a large number of RCC panels are missing," the official said, referring to the heavy-duty carbon-fiber heat shielding on the wing's leading edge.

With enough panels ripped off the leading edge of the wing, it would have been subjected to enormous drag and the bare metal would have been melted in the heat of re-entry.

"If (the image) is real, and I'm beginning to think it is, it's showing a lot of pieces" missing, the newspaper quoted the official as saying. "Not one, not two ... at least three."

The board sent key segments of Columbia's wreckage to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for testing to determine what they would have looked like on ground radar images of the shuttle.

FMI: www.nasa.gov