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Remembrance: Columbia photo collage Page 3
Opinion: Gone, not forgotten Page 9
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Volume 109 • Issue 87 • 10 pages
Texas A&M University
www.thebatt.com
Monday, February 3, 2003
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A country in mourning
Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over eastern Texas
Source: NASA
Michael P. Anderson
Payload commander
Lieutenant Colonel,
U.S. Air Force
Born Dec. 25, 1959
Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Married
Astronaut since 1994,
previous mission to Russia’s Mir
space station in 1998
David Brown
Mission specialist
Captain, U.S. Navy
Born April 16, 1956
Arlington, Va.
Astronaut since 1996,
first space mission
Kalpana Chawla
Mission specialist
Aerospace engineer
Kama), India
Astronaut since
1994, previous
mission as robotic
arm operator on
STS-87,1997
Dr. Laurel Clark
Mission specialist
Commander, U.S. Navy
Racine, Wis.
Married, one child
Astronaut since 1996, first
space mission
Rick Husband
Commander
Colonel, U.S. Air Force
Born July 12, 1957
Amarillo, Texas
Married, two children
Astronaut since 1994,
previous mission on STS-
96 Discovery, 1999
William C. McCool
Pilot
Commander, U.S. Navy
Born Sept. 23, 1961
San Diego
Married
Astronaut since 1996,
first space mission
ban Ramon
Payload specialist
Colonel, Israel Air
Force
Born June 20, 1954
Tel Aviv, Israel
Married, four children
Astronaut since 1997,
first space mission
SOURCE: AP
SOURCE: KRT CAMPUS COLUMBIA CREW
By Sarah Walch
THE BATTALION
Space Shuttle Columbia broke
apart in flames over Texas Saturday
morning, taking the lives of the
seven astronauts on board and leav
ing the U.S. space program reeling.
NASA Associate Administrator
for Space Flight Bill Readdy said
Mission Control at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston, Texas, received its
last transmission from Columbia
around 8 a.m. central standard time,
and then lost all vehicle data.
Readdy was close to tears at a
press conference at 2 p.m. Saturday.
After several failed attempts to
reestablish communication, and after
NASA compiled reports of the
explosion and subsequent debris
coming in from across the state,
NASA workers finally realized that
they “had a bad day,” Readdy said.
It has been 17 years since the
space shuttle Challenger exploded at
lift-off due to a faulty O ring in the
solid rocket booster. The Columbia
is the first space shuttle to be
destroyed upon reentry.
Columbia was only 16 minutes
from landing at the Kennedy Space
Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla, when
it exploded in midair in the skies
over Texas.
In Nacogdoches, Texas, officials
said they had more than 800 con
firmed reports of debris from the
space shuttle on the ground.
Emergency Management
Coordinator and Nacogdoches
County Judge Sue Kennedy said that
there were 500 pieces of debris inside
the city and 300 outside the city.
“The space shuttle debris can be
found in a straight line, in an area
roughly 100 by 10 miles, from
southeast to northwest,” said Todd
Staples, state senator for District 3
which encompasses Palestine, Texas.
Staples said Nacogdoches County
holds the bulk of the debris, but parts
of the space shuttle have also
descended to earth in Sabine, San
Augustine and Anderson Counties.
Kennedy said NASA has instruct
ed her office to send law enforce
ment officers out to every site where
debris is reported and leave officers
at the site until its significance to the
space shuttle has been determined.
“We don’t have enough people to
put someone out there with every
piece,” she said.
Two NASA astronauts, Greg
Johnson and Mark Kelly, were in
Nacogdoches to help inspect the
fragments.
The National Guard was on hand,
the Department of Public Safety
called in more than 100 officers, and
the Texas Bureau of Alcoholic
Beverages Task Force recruited 60
members to assist the Nacogdoches
County Sheriff’s Department in
recovery and containment ot the
See Columbia on page 4
RANDAL FORD* THE BATTALION
A red cross with flowers stands in front of a police line near a piece of fallen Columbia debris in downtown Nacogdoches on Saturday.
Temperature rose
before explosion
Shuttle held A&M tests
By Paul Recer
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
(AP) — Just before it disintegrated,
Space Shuttle Columbia experi
enced an abnormal rise in tempera
ture and wind resistance that forced
the craft’s automatic pilot to make
rapid changes to its flight path —
possible evidence that some heat-
protection tiles were missing or
damaged, NASA said Sunday.
Engineers began assembling a
grim puzzle from debris recovered
in Texas and Louisiana, and dis
closed computerized data showing
that the unusual events before
Saturday’s accident occurred on
the left side of the shuttle — the
same side hit by a piece of fuel-
tank insulation during the launch
16 days earlier.
Shuttle Program Manager Ron
Dittemore cautioned that data was
preliminary but said the combina
tion of events and data suggest
that the thermal tiles that protect
the shuttle from burning up during
reentry may have been damaged
on Jan. 16.
“We’ve got some more detec
tive work. But we’re making
progress inch by inch,” Dittemore
said, adding that engineers are try
ing to extract 32 seconds more of
See Temp on page 2
By Melissa Sullivan
THE BATTALION
Texas A&M graduate and aero
space engineering major Maria
Puente, Class of 2002, worked side-
by-side with NASA astronauts and
officials on an A&M experiment
housed in the space shuttle Columbia
days before the shuttle exploded upon
reentry over Texas.
Puente was active in one of A&M’s
several experiments, StarNav I, which
ran a series of tests for a new naviga
tion system aboard the shuttle that
takes pictures of stars to calculate a
space craft’s position.
During a period of 10 days, two to
three students rotated in shifts and
worked 24 hours a day at Houston’s
Johnson Space Center’s mission con
trol on the system’s experiment with
NASA astronauts and officials.
“It was a little intimidating, but we
rose to the occasion,” Puente said.
“Most of us were students and there
were things we had to know, like act
ing professional.”
Even though the experiment ended
Jan. 28, the computers kept recording
data from the shuttle, said David
Boyle, director of the Commercial
Space Center for Engineering.
Boyle said the team had enough
information saved on its computer to
make the experiment a success.
The A&M professor who con
cocted StarNav I said officials deemed
the experiment a success based on the
See Tests on page 2
Shuttle debris falls in East Texas
Debris scattered across Texas, Louisiana
Since the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia Saturday, there
have been hundreds of reports of debris throughout parts of Texas
and Louisiana.
By Sarah Walch
THE BATTALION
NACOGDOCHES—Debris was found scat
tered across East Texas this weekend from the first
NASA space shuttle to ever break apart during its
re-entry to earth.
Area residents were visibly shaken by the
explosion of space shuttle Columbia, and by
Saturday afternoon, Nacogdoches County residents
were fielding questions from reporters from all
across Texas.
Darlene Johnson, a Nacogdoches resident, said
that around 8 a.m. she felt the ground shake “just
like an earthquake.” Johnson works at the Yako
Fritz Restaurant in downtown Nacogdoches.
Johnson echoed several other resident’s
accounts that the explosion sounded like rolling
thunder, but when residents looked up, the sky was
citystal clear.
Bill and Lisa Payne were at the scene of one
debris site in downtown Nacogdoches.
See Debris on page 4
OKLAHOMA
j ARK.
1 1 Countv where
-\r T
debris found
TEXAS
,F
Palestine,
Dallas # Cherokee —
. ■ Henderson
IS i •WaXahachie. . |
. Rico* if; •Athens
Hopkins
Debris is being collected and
trucked to Barksdale A.F.B
for inspection and analysis
' Kerens .
Shreveport*
Rusk
if ert V •Jacksonville
J ■ Neches*,, V
Barksdale A.F.B.
■Is
Caddo
- Toledo Bend Reservoir
Anderson-^ ' .ffemphill
Nacogdoches .
San Augustine —> '
Sabine —
•Leesville
I— Woiooi
SOURCES: Associated Press; ESRI