Remains of shuttle recovered

Press, 31 January 1986, Page 8

Remains of shuttle recovered

NZPA-APCape Canaveral, Florida

The United States Coast Guard pulled 272 kg of metal and tiles from the space shuttle Challenger out of the Atlantic Ocean yesterday and experts impounded every piece of evidence for clues to the cause of death of the seven people in the craft.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said that the five men and two women aboard the 100-tonne shuttle probably had no warning of the impending explosion.

The debris collected did not include any clothing or personal effects of the astronauts. None of the crew members’ bodies has been recovered.

Mission control, with all

its sophisticated technology, had no warning either, said Jay Greene, who was directing Challenger’s climb to space. “We train awfully hard for these flights and we train under every scenario you can possibly imagine,” he said.

“There was nothing anyone could have done for this one. It just stopped.”

He described the mood in the control room as extremely professional under the circumstances, but also very sombre and quiet.

When computer screens showed no more data was coming in, he said, engineers watched the views from television cameras.

“We were hoping something better would come out of it,” he said.

Speculation has focused on an ominous bright flash that was visible at the base of the fuel tank before the explosion. The shuttle director, Mr Jesse Moore, said that he wanted to discourage that speculation. “You are asking me to lay out causes,” he said. “I’m not prepared to do that”

N.A.S.A. will hold a memorial service at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston tomorrow and said the President, Mr Ronald Reagan, and his wife, Nancy, would attend.

At Cape Canaveral plans were made to name a school after the teacher, Christa McAuliffe, who was in the shuttle as the first citizen to fly in space.

She had planned to

teach two lessons from space beamed by television to schoolchildren in the United States. Also killed were the commander Francis Scobee, aged 46; the pilot, Commander Michael Smith, aged 40; Dr Judith Resnik, aged 36; Ronald McNair, aged 35; Lieuten-ant-Colonel Ellison Onizuka, aged 39, and Gregory Jarvis, aged 41. An investigation team held its first meeting to start the long inquiry into why t s .e SUSI.2 billion ($2.28 billion) shuttle, appearing to be on a perfect course, suddenly exploded 75 seconds after lift-off on Wednesday, raining fiery debris into the Atlantic Ocean.

The space agency impounded every scrap of paper, film and data connected with the launch

and pleaded with people to turn in anything they find on the beaches in the area in central Florida.

“We need every piece of that because we don’t know where the clue might be,” said Mr Richard Smith, the director of the Kennedy Space Centre.

The largest remnant was a chunk of metal 4m by 1.2 m.

Mr Moore the director said that it was unlikely the bodies of the crew members would be found.

“I would always like to hold out hope," he said.

“However, we’ve seen a lot of small debris.” “We have no indication that the commander had any sense of anything wrong,” said Mr Graham. “The spacecraft was travelling at more than twice the speed of sound

at 47,000 feet (14,326 metres), which is at the boundary of the stratosphere where there are physical changes such as optical and visual phenomena and shock waves.” Mr Graham said the ship's two solid rocket boosters, which could be seen heading away from the fireball and forming a huge Y-shaped trail in the sky, were deliberately destroyed by the range safety officer. Among 20 leaders who sent messages of condolence were Pope John Paul 11, the Queen, the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Prime Minister of Britain, Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

The United Nations and N.A.T.O. also extended sympathy.