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Paris, 5 February 2003
Information Note
NX 03-2003

Space Shuttle COLUMBIA- Information Note No. 2
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Major Events

Yesterday, 4th February 2003, a memorial ceremony was held at NASA/JSC 
in the presence of US President G. W. Bush, representatives of the 
families of the Columbia astronauts, many other dignitaries and 
representatives of the International Partners. The Head of the 
European Astronauts Centre, several astronauts, the Houston resident 
office and ESA staff associated with the STS 107 payloads represented 
ESA.

Thursday 6th February a religious ceremony will be held in the 
National Cathedral, Washington D.C. International partners of the ISS 
and other space programmes representatives will attend together with 
high level representatives of various European governments . The ESA 
Director General, Antonio Rodotà and Jörg Feustel-Büechl, Director of 
Human Spaceflight, will represent ESA at the ceremony.

Failure investigation technical update 

Ron Dittemore, Shuttle Programme Manager, NASA/JSC, relating to the
incident on 1st February, reconstructed the final minutes of Shuttle
Columbia's flight before communication was lost in a news conference,
stating that:

- At 13:52 GMT, three-left main gear brake line temperature sensors 
showed an unusual rise in the left wheel well area (Columbia 
approaching California coast).

- At 13:53, a fourth left brake line strut actuator temperature sensor
showed a 30-40 degree Farenheit (17-22 degree Celsius) rise in 
temperature over a five-minute period (Columbia over California).

- At 13:55, a fifth left brake line main gear sensor showed a sharp 
rise in temperature.

- At 13:57, left wing temperature sensors failed "off-scale low", 
meaning no further data was being received on the ground (Columbia 
over Arizona).

- And at 13:59, just before communication was lost with Columbia, 
there was evidence of drag on the aero surfaces of the left wing, 
causing two out of four yaw steering jets in that area of the Shuttle 
to fire for 1.5 seconds to counteract the increased drag. The vehicle 
was still under control, but the rates of change of trajectory 
parameters were greater than normally experienced.

Mr. Dittemore said more time will be needed to retrieve an additional 
32 seconds of data acquired by ground computers after communication 
was lost with Columbia to see if it is useful to the inquiry.

Regarding a piece of foam insulation which fell off the External Tank 
some 80 seconds after launch, he said imagery analysis showed that the 
foam measured about 50 cm by 40cm by 15 cm and weighed about 1.2 kg.

The analyses were based not only on the STS-107 images but also on a
similar incident that occurred on Shuttle Atlantis flight in October 
2002 (STS-112), on which flight the crew had filmed the External Tank 
as it separated from the Orbiter during launch.

The conclusion at that time was that the debris did not represent a 
threat to the safety of the crew or the vehicle. The analyses will be 
repeated to determine whether this incident could have been a 
contributory cause to the eventual failure.

The collection and assembly of debris continues with especial emphasis 
on any items containing data or records.  Each item is analysed to see 
if it can yield useful information.

In addition NASA are performing a series of analyses to try to predict 
the source of the problem.  They will determine the amount of wing 
damage that would be necessary to lead to the un-symmetric drag values 
experienced during re-entry.  They will analyse the amount of thermal 
protection loss that would have been necessary to lead to the 
progressive disintegration of Columbia that was experienced.

ISS status and short term plans

NASA and the ISS  international partners have already entered in 
briefing sessions to assess the status and plans of the ISS.

The crew are working nominally, and are offloading the Progress 
re-supply ship  which docked successfully at the scheduled time of 
14:49 GMT (15:49 CET) yesterday, 4th February.

All Partners at present strive to achieve that the ISS stays 
permanently manned.

Proposals are being developed to look at how the Soyuz and Progress
vehicles could best support the station and the options. The Soyuz
replacement flights with ESA astronauts on board currently scheduled 
for April and October are included in the analyses forming part of 
these ongoing considerations.

Update of European Science data of STS-107

First contacts with the operations and science teams of the three
successful ESA instruments that transmitted all their telemetry and 
video data to the ground, revealed great grief about the tragic end of 
the STS-107 mission, but great satisfaction with the science data that 
had been achieved due to the outstanding performance of the crew.

The Facility for Adsorption and Surface Tension (FAST) which first 
flew on STS-95 in October 1998 (with US veteran astronaut John Glenn 
and ESA astronaut Pedro Duque among the crew), performed extremely 
well.  Three experiments were performed sequentially for one German 
and two Italian investigator groups.

The COM2PLEX instrument consists of three Loop Heat Pipes provided by
three industrial companies in Belgium, France and Germany.  Detailed 
data are available and qualitative analyses indicate improved heat 
transfer capabilities.

For all seven flight experiments of the Advanced Respiratory 
Monitoring System (ARMS) supported by investigator teams from Denmark, 
Germany, Italy and Sweden, excellent data were received.

More information on the European instruments and experiments onboard 
the STS-107 can be found at  http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/STS107. 
Fact sheets of the experiments can be downloaded from :
http://www.estec.esa.int/spaceflight/transfer/STS107exp.


For more information, please contact :
ESA Media Relations Service
Tel: +33(0)1.53.69.7155
Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690

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