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STS-107 Mishap Response Status Report #10 
Friday, Feb. 28, 2003 - 6 p.m. CST 
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas 

About 13 minutes of video recorded by Columbia's crew Feb. 1 as they
prepared for landing was released today on NASA television.  The video 
recorded on the flight deck was taken with a small camera mounted 
first to the right of Pilot Willie McCool and later held by Mission 
Specialist Laurel Clark. 

Commander Rick Husband and Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, the
other two crewmembers seated on the flight deck, also are visible in
the video.  The video begins about 7:35 a.m. CST when Columbia was
about 500,000 feet above the South Pacific and ends when the orbiter
was approaching the San Francisco Bay area, about 11 minutes before
contact between Columbia and the Mission Control Center in Houston was 
lost. Apparently the rest of the tape had been destroyed. 

Astronaut Scott Altman described the tape as showing the crew going
through normal landing preparations. It is like tapes routinely shot
during Shuttle re-entries, he said. It shows flashes and plasma events 
out the window typical of night entries, with nothing unusual noted.

The tape was found Feb. 6 near Palestine, Texas, on its take-up reel
but without the tape case. On normal Shuttle missions, audio and video 
are normally recorded through to landing.

Lufkin, Texas, Mayor Louis Bronaugh visited the operations center at
Lufkin today and accepted on behalf of his city a certificate of
appreciation from FEMA's Scott Wells, the Federal Coordinating Officer 
for the Columbia recovery effort, and NASA's Allen Flynt and David 
Whittle, who are leading NASA's search efforts. The certificate
thanked the City of Lufkin for its support of the search effort.
Debris recovery coordination efforts were consolidated this week from
several field centers into the single Lufkin site. 

During the past two days, searchers continued to recover a variety of
materials from the Space Shuttle Columbia, including a large section
of the outboard corner of the left wing's inboard elevon, and the
17-inch disconnect assembly from the Shuttle's belly. The 17-inch
disconnect is significant in that it may lead searchers to cameras
that were mounted nearby for the purpose of documenting the condition
of the external tank as it is jettisoned. 

Weather cleared for some search efforts today, but continued to hamper 
others: 

The 48 Corsicana ground teams resumed searches as ice thawed. Total
searchers in the field today included 940 from the Corsicana base
camp, 600 in Nacogdoches, 700 in Palestine and 740 in Hemphill. A
total of 150 crews with 3,000 searchers combed the area. 

Dive teams led by the Navy continued their search efforts in Toledo
Bend reservoir and Lake Nacogdoches. Twelve helicopters resumed
searches Wednesday from Palestine, but low ceilings subsequently kept
search aircraft on the ground. 

Earlier searchers recovered what is believed to be the Combustion
Module-2 experiment facility that had been aboard the Spacehab
Research Double Module in Columbia's cargo bay. Three flame-related
experiments were conducted in the module during the STS-107 mission.
Scientists estimate that more than 50 percent of data from those
experiments was received by downlink during the mission. 

The western-most find of confirmed Shuttle debris to date is a piece
of tile found about 40 miles northwest of Lubbock, Texas.  A
low-intensity search effort is being organized along the California
coast, looking for any evidence of material that might have fallen in
the ocean and drifted to shore. Volunteer sheriffs posies are expected 
to search the shoreline in Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties, 30 
miles north and south of Columbia's re-entry track. 

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board will hold its first public
hearing Thursday at the University of Houston. For more information
about board activities on the Internet visit the CAIB's new website: 

www.caib.us

For more information on NASA on the Internet, see:  www.nasa.gov 

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