Marc Flemming
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Of 250 videos aboard the space shuttle Columbia, it was the only one to survive that had any recording left.
On Friday, NASA TV broadcast some of the final minutes in the lives of the shuttle astronauts, showing a businesslike routine broken by cheerfulness and awe at the colors just outside the cockpit.
The tape ends just four minutes before any sign of trouble on the shuttle as it made its way back into Earth's atmosphere Feb. 1.
"It's really neat. It's a bright orange-yellow out over the nose, all around the nose," says pilot William McCool as Columbia re-enters the atmosphere above the Pacific at the end of the 16-day mission.
"Wait 'til you start seeing the swirl patterns out your left or right windows," responds commander Rick Husband.
"Wow," McCool says.
"Looks like a blast furnace," says Husband. Then later he adds, "Yeah, you definitely don't want to be outside now."
"What, like we did before?" jokes Laurel Clark.
Three astronauts — Michael Anderson, David Brown and Ilan Ramon — are not on the tape because they were seated in the lower deck.
The four on camera collect empty drink bags and put on their spacesuit gloves. The camera is mounted at first, then Clark grabs it. She trains it on flight engineer Kalpana Chawla, who waves. Then Clark turns it around, framing her own face, and grins broadly.
It is evident in the 13 minutes of video that none of the astronauts had a clue what lay ahead. Earlier this week, NASA officials said Husband was notified about the tank debris that smacked into the left wing barely a minute after liftoff; he was also told of an analysis concluding damage to the thermal tiles posed no safety threat. He was said to be satisfied with the results.
Remarkably, the video cassette found three weeks ago in East Texas was the only one of the more than 250 shuttle videos with any images. Most of the others document scientific experiments.
"Some might view it as a miracle," said Charles Figley, director of the Traumatology Institute at Florida State University. "Suddenly here is a postcard of these men and women."
He and other experts said the images should offer peace of mind for the astronauts' families, because it shows them happy and doing what they loved.
The spaceship broke apart 38 miles above Texas, 16 minutes shy of touchdown. The accident investigation board suspects a break in the left wing let in the scorching hot gases that swirled around the craft and led to the destruction of Columbia and the deaths of all seven astronauts. Investigators are trying to figure out what caused the breach.
The images show flight-deck activity beginning around 8:35 a.m. EST as Columbia soared 500,000 feet above the south-central Pacific Ocean. It continues until 8:48 a.m., when the shuttle was over the eastern Pacific, southwest of San Francisco, at an altitude of about 250,000 feet.
Four minutes later, the first signs of overheating appeared. Another seven minutes, and Mission Control lost contact.
Thirty-two seconds after that, all communication ended as the spaceship shattered.
Source: AP
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03-02-2003 07:59 AM
