NASA had initially stated that remains from all seven astronauts had been recovered, but later issued a retraction. The remains may in due course be sent to the Charles C.
The center also handled the remains of victims killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September Forensic experts are confident the remains of the astronauts can be formally identified using standard techniques such as matching dental records, fingerprints and DNA.
He also said there was no evidence that the crew knew what was happening. Mr Dittemore said temperatures shot up on the left hand side of Columbia in the seven minutes before the radio went dead. The rise was most marked -- 60 degrees Fahrenheit The independent inquiry, led by retired Navy admiral Mr Harold W.
Gehmen, will sift through the Columbia wreckage being collected and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. FBI agents are also assisting in the recovery, but officials emphasised that there was no evidence of sabotage. NASA will conduct its own investigation, and Senate and House committees will conduct separate inquiries.
The loss of the shuttle, one of four in NASA's fleet, casts a shadow over the US space programme, coming as it does when defence costs are soaring over homeland security and war preparations in the Persian Gulf. The US budget that Mr Bush was scheduled to unveil today was to include a NASA initiative, called Project Prometheus, to develop systems to enable human crews to venture beyond Earth's orbit for the first time in three decades. Much of the debris from Columbia, including circuit boards and a space helmet, was found scattered over the town of Nacogdoches and surrounding pine forests.
Authorities have urged the public not to disturb the debris but instead report any finds to local authorities. Some of the pieces from the shuttle could be radioactive or toxic, they warned. And investigators want all the remnants for their probe. In Texas, Nacogdoches County officials said civilian reports of debris were coming in at a rate of about 25 per hour, too fast for search teams to keep up.
In Sabine County, a municipal emergency coordinator, Billy Ted Smith, said some people exposed to debris were sent to hospitals for treatment of "burns and respiratory distress. Several purported pieces of debris were listed on the online auction site eBay in the hours after the disaster, but the site later pulled them down.
Sixty seconds after liftoff, a piece of foam insulation came off the orange external fuel tank, and smacked into the orbiter's left wing. NASA engineers immediately worried whether that damaged any of the critical heat tiles that protect the shuttle on re-entry.
Once the shuttle was in orbit, they conducted an extensive engineering analysis. Even if there had been damage, there would have no way for the astronauts to check it out or to repair the thermal tiles. There was no robotic arm on board to take a look, and the astronauts cannot stray past the cargo bay doors.
The unfolding disaster was visible in the skies over Texas and on images captured by a weather satellite. The agency hopes to help engineers design a new shuttle replacement capsule more capable of surviving an accident.
An internal NASA team recommends 30 changes based on Columbia, many of them aimed at pressurization suits, helmets and seatbelts. As was already known, the astronauts died either from lack of oxygen during depressurization or from hitting something as the spacecraft spun violently out of control. The report said it wasn't clear which of those events killed them.
And in the case of the helmets and other gear, three crewmembers weren't wearing gloves, which provide crucial protection from depressurization. One wasn't in the seat, one wasn't wearing a helmet and several were not fully strapped in. The gloves were off because they are too bulky to do certain tasks and there is too little time to prepare for re-entry, the report notes.
Had all those procedures been followed, the astronauts might have lived longer and been able to take more actions, but they still wouldn't have survived, the report says.
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