Space Shuttle Accidents

Curators at the National Air and Space Museum are wrestling with the delicate question of how to present the Challenger and Columbia tragedies. Specifically, should an exhibition on the space shuttle include pieces of wreckage? Doing so would be a departure for the museum. Until now the tragedies of airplane and space travel have been dealt with briefly -- as concise mentions in explanatory panels or the display of simple artifacts, such as a crew patch.

The problem of foam debris -- believed to have brought down the Columbia -- may never be completely solved and could damage space shuttles on future missions, two members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said this week. The orbiter's delicate thermal protection system was gravely damaged by a large chunk of foam during January's launch -- the latest instance of insulation falling off the space shuttle's giant external tank during the program's 22-year history.

The panel of experts set up to monitor NASA's compliance with soon-to-be-released shuttle safety recommendations met publicly for the first time Thursday, with a veteran astronaut promising an independent assessment of the agency's performance. "Our task is to look at those things that have been recommended The Columbia Accident Investigation Board -- which is probing the causes of the Feb. 1 shuttle breakup that killed seven astronauts -- is expected to release its findings Aug.

Seven asteroids circling the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are being named for the astronauts who died in the space shuttle Columbia accident, officials announced. Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown and Laurel Clark of NASA and Ilan Ramon of Israel died Feb. 1 when Columbia broke apart.

NASA will follow recommendations by the independent board investigating the shuttle Columbia disaster to the letter and will make no effort to defend itself against findings that are expected to be harsh, a top space official said Tuesday. "There will be no effort whatsoever to argue or defend," Frederick Gregory, NASA's deputy administrator, told reporters at the Kennedy Space Center. "We will respond to each of the findings and recommendations.

Investigators say Boeing's loss of key engineering talent in recent years played a role in the company's flawed analysis during the Columbia mission that the crew would return safely. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board is likely to include such a judgment when it delivers its accident report later this month, though its formal findings and conclusions are still under review, according to four sources close to the board. At issue is whether Boeing Co.'

Ever since the shuttle accident, rocket engineer Jud Lovingood has spent difficult days wondering whether he could have prevented the tragic deaths of seven astronauts. "When something bad happens, like killing a bunch of people, you just think: 'What could we have done that we didn't do?' " Lovingood said in a recent interview. "I was shocked. I was sick. I could never make an engineering decision that put a life at risk again."

NASA's top managers for the doomed Columbia space shuttle mission publicly defended their actions for the first time Tuesday, saying that no individual should be blamed personally for the accident because safety was always their top priority. "It goes without saying that we were all trying to do the right thing," Linda Ham, the chairwoman of the team that ran the mission, said in her first public comments on the disaster. "Nobody wanted to do harm to anyone.

The crew of the Columbia lived for at least one minute after their last communication with NASA ground controllers in Houston, a potentially important finding that could affect future efforts to improve the survivability of space shuttle accidents, investigators said Tuesday.

Analysis of a crucial test in the Columbia accident investigation suggests that the age of a damaged wing shield may not have played a central role in the space shuttle's breakup, a leading investigator said Friday. Columbia, first launched in 1981, was NASA's oldest shuttle. The wing shield that investigators believe failed during reentry Feb. 1 had flown on all 28 Columbia missions before the disaster, investigators said.