Investigators have recovered a large piece of one of shuttle Columbia's wings, a significant find in the probe into what downed the doomed spacecraft, a Nasa official said yesterday.
Recovered from the Fort Worth area, the new fragment of Columbia's wreckage is made of black reinforced material meant to withstand the high temperatures on the shuttle's nose and leading edges of its wings during descent.
"There has been a significant recovery ... we do have a large piece of one of the wings," Michael Kostelnik, head of Nasa's shuttle and space station programs, said at a briefing.
"It is not clear which wing this is, but obviously given the anomalies that we have on the descent coming through the left wing obviously, this structure is very important and will be transferred to the Fort Worth site," Kostelnik said, referring to the Texas site where recovered items are being analysed.
Investigators are also looking at a low-resolution image of the shuttle's descent taken from a US Air Force laboratory in the western United States at about the time Columbia crossed the California coast, when the first anomalies were spotted by ground controllers early on February 1.
Minutes after these anomalies were detected, ground controllers lost all contact with the shuttle and soon after that, Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
Kostelnik described the image as a long-range optical photograph with "very poor resolution." He said he was not aware of a high-resolution photograph reportedly made by the US Air Force from the ground that showed a ragged edge on the shuttle's left wing.
That report from Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine said the high-resolution image indicated serious damage to Columbia's left wing.
Since the disaster occurred, questions have centered on problems with the shuttle's left wing after photos taken some 81 seconds after launch showed a piece of foam insulation falling off the shuttle's external tank and hitting the underside of the left wing.
Citing unnamed sources close to the investigation, the magazine reported that Air Force images show a ragged edge on the left wing near the fuselage and signs the shuttle's right rear engine was working harder to compensate for the damage.
"It is possible, but yet not confirmed, that the impact of foam debris from the shuttle's external tank during launch could have played a role in damage to the wing leading edge, where the deformity appears in USAF imagery," it said.
Kostelnik said the investigation will take a more measured pace in coming days as the thousands of pieces of the wreckage are analysed.
He said investigators are still interested in recovering any shuttle debris collected from California, Arizona and other points west of the break-up over Texas. Some items from these areas have been recovered but it has not yet been determined whether these are debris from the shuttle, Kostelnik said.