CAIB

Columbia Accident Investigation Board Press Briefing
February 12, 2003

GEHMAN: There are thousands of NASA engineers and scientists and technicians who are poring over data and poring over processes right now. They're all in working groups. They're all still working just as hard as they were as if we weren't here. But we have placed ourselves over top of that investigation. And we will be availing ourselves of all the data and all that work. For this week, in the near term, the board is going to finish up here in Houston tonight. Tomorrow we're going to go to Kennedy Space Center and spend a couple of days. We're going to go to Marshall Space Flight Center and spend a couple of days. And we'll be back into Michoud also. And we'll be back here on Saturday night. And Sunday is a working day for us. And we will continue in Houston, then, for the foreseeable future.

We think that it's very important for our understanding of what technical people tell us that we have a personal relationship with the hardware, a personal relationship with the equipment, and we actually have seen and touched and understand what it is they're talking about. So it does take a little time for us to run down to Kennedy, but it's worth it in our examination. And at the same time, of course, we'll be looking at various things that we need to. The board is interested in establishing–not only are we established off of the JSC now, but we're also interested in establishing an independent way for people to communicate with us. So in the very near future, we're going to establish our own Web site, just like NASA has their Web site. We'll establish our own address, which we will publish. And people who'd like to communicate directly with the board, not via NASA, will be able to do so. And we think that's very important. A couple of recent developments, and then I'll close and we'll take some questions. The debris collection continues centered over East Texas and western Louisiana. There's no change to that.

I would report to you that, based on my reports that I received this morning, we still do not–do not–have a single piece of confirmed shuttle debris west of Fort Worth. There are many, many very, very interesting reports of sightings that which the MIT is running down. We continue to look at some very interesting reports.

GEHMAN: I believe that the statistics are right now we've run down 105 of the 179 credible reports of debris west of Fort Worth, and we have yet to find a single confirmed piece of shuttle debris west of Forth Worth.

The number of pieces of debris at Barksdale Air Force Base is passing 1,600. The rate of delivery now is two or three truck loads a day, and the very first truck load of debris headed toward Kennedy has been dispatched and the process of reconstruction at Kennedy will begin. The search continues. We are very grateful to the many, many agencies that have–and individuals that are helping us with this. All of the law enforcement agencies, FEMA, National Guard, the various Texas and Louisiana agencies, Forest Service–I can't name them all, but this really would not be possible without the dedicated and unselfish work of all those people who don't get a lot of publicity, particularly the last couple of days when it's been cold and raining out there. They really have done a wonderful job. We are now up in the thousands of pieces that have been collected, and they're being very careful about it. And we as a board, and I know that NASA is also– would like to express our appreciation for all the people that are doing that. Let's see. Two working groups–the many, many working groups continue at full speed. We have made ourselves aware of what they're doing. And as our investigation gets deeper we'll begin to interact personally and in great detail with each of the working groups. But the many, many working groups, like the external tank working group, the reentry working group, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they're all working very, very hard and meticulously and we've become aware of what they're doing.

One of the things that we're working on very hard that will be made available to you in the not-toodistant future is the use of all of the photography that civilians and personal–private individuals have provided us: photography in the form of stills and photography in the form of video loops. What we are doing is building a great mosaic in which we are actually superimposing–not superimposing, but we are combining various video products that we can ascertain the exact time line of what the video product is, along with the telemetry data and the radar observations, into a fairly sophisticated audio-visual and telemetry reconstruction from the time the orbiter Columbia crossed the coast until we lost signal.

That process is going on right now. It's very meticulous. The photography is–from private individuals has been very helpful. And if there is more out there from either government agencies–what do you call those telescopes that peer into the sky?–anything, it has been extraordinarily helpful to build this what we hope will be essentially a stereoscopic mosaic of the shuttle as it came across the sky, remembering it was dark when it came across California.

But the pieces that we have so far have added to our understanding of what happened, and we have a lot more work to do. We're just beginning on this, but it seems to be promising. I think the last thing on my list here is to say that we are going to release, after this press conference is over, the audio loop in mission control. You can listen to it and draw your own conclusions.

GEHMAN: And in it you will hear the various control stations report the things that have already been reported to you, but you'll hear the voice report as they report loss of signal and report the various anomalies. So that will be available after this press conference is over, and you can use it as you see fit.

Let me see. I want to make sure I haven't missed anything. And with that, I would say that that's all of my prepared remarks.

And Steve, if you want to recognize the first questioner, we will begin.

QUESTION: For either the admiral or you can delegate, what needs to be done regarding testing of insulation foam, fragile thermal tiles? How will you be conducting impact tests, velocity tests? Where might that take place? And will you be directly involved in that?

GEHMAN: We as a board are not going to comment at this time on any particular cause or favorite theory or hypothesis or anything like that, other than to say that all of that kind of testing is going to happen. And, as I indicated before, if our independent analysis team thinks it needs to be duplicated or verified by an independent panel, we will avail ourselves of that also.

So I am not going to comment on any particular piece of equipment or whether or not any particular piece of debris or anything like that is more promising or more important than any other at this stage. QUESTION: A kind of a philosophical question, if you will: We've gone from these daily briefings from last week when things were hot and heavy, and now we're going to transition, obviously, over to you guys, can fill in the dissemination information on a more relaxed basis, I guess, once a week or whatever.

I am trying to get a sense of what kind of products will be released to us as the investigation goes on. Obviously the audio loop will be very helpful. Ron Dittemore was talking about a telemetry time line and an overlay of the ground track that he was trying to get together. I don't know the status of that. But just philosophically, how do you view, you know, the willingness of the board to release technical data, understanding you're not going to draw conclusions until you are done, but just letting us in on some of the stuff you see as you see it?

GEHMAN: When I said that the board would be available weekly, that did not–I did not mean to imply that that's the only time we're going to release information.

First of all, NASA continues to release information. And certainly statistics like how much debris has been picked up–and when we find an interesting part, we'll tell you right away. I mean, if we find something substantial, we'll–that'll be released right away. What I meant to say is that access to the board for where we are and what we're doing would be available on a weekly basis. But we will continue to release–we will have a press availability daily if that's what you want. But you just won't be members of the board. We'll be all over the country doing things.

But as far as information coming out, it'll be just like we did before. It'll be on a continuous basis.

QUESTION: It's been–my last technical briefing was on Friday. And you ran over some of the summary information. But I just wondered if there was anything else we've missed, if there is any other important new factual information, raw data that you have now that we don't know about yet?

GEHMAN: As of this time, there is no significant facts or details that I'm aware of.

For example, the building of this stereoscopic, visual representation of the flight is going to take a lot of work. Most of these videotapes from private individuals don't have very, very good reference points in them and things like that. So you've got to be really careful what you're looking at.

The time line that Mr. Dittemore is working on, that continues to be refined. And when it is, it will be released when it–I mean, whenever it's available, it'll be released.

I am not aware of any particular panel, if you want to–I'm not aware of any particular new, breaking kind of a thing. So that's, kind of, why we're releasing the audio loop. That's now available. And I'm not aware of any particular news.

As I say, when we find major pieces of the shuttle, that would be released as it occurs.

QUESTION: This is a Washington-type question.

QUESTION: No surprise.

As you know, members of Congress and other critics have been pressing for you to not be a panel that was picked by NASA and reports to NASA, but to report to the president or somebody else. Is that resolved in your mind at this point, and if not could you address your philosophy and your thinking on that?

GEHMAN: The existence of this board is a direct result of the recommendations made after the Challenger accident. And the implementation of the recommendations from the Challenger accident were approved by the president.

So as soon as this incident occurred they got their procedures off the shelf and we had our first meeting by teleconference at 5 o'clock on Saturday afternoon.

The administrator of NASA signed the letter creating this board, but–and his street address will be on the envelope of the outside of the report.

But this board is fully aware that we have many constituents. We are fully aware that the families of the deceased astronauts are our constituents. We are aware that the Congress of the United States is one of our constituents, the White House, the taxpayers and the citizens of this country are all constituents of this board, and we feel an obligation to all of them for a full disclosure.

I mean, our report will be addressed to the administrator of NASA, but it will be a public document. And I am not the least bit concerned, and I think I can speak for my fellow board members, that we are not the least bit concerned about how the various branches of government in Washington work out who's going to review whose work, or anything like that, because ours is going to be a deep and thorough investigation. We're going to attempt to find the causes and make recommendations, and we're not concerned about who reports to whom in this matter.

And it–we don't see that it has any process relevance to what we do. We're going to work just as hard, just as fast, put just as many days in, we're going to get just as much cooperation from everybody involved, no matter who signed our charter.

GEHMAN: So it is a legitimate question of public policy, but it doesn't have any bearing on how we do our work.

And I have already communicated with several members of Congress, some of the oversight committees myself, not via the administrative NASA, and let them know how I feel about that. So there's no problem on our end of this matter. And I–that's a long answer to a question. I hope it's helpful.

QUESTION: Obviously this is a very difficult investigation. Originally you were given 60 days. We know that you can ask for more time if you need it. But given the complexity of this investigation, do you think that 60-day time period is realistic to come up with any kind of conclusions?

GEHMAN: The 60 days comes right out of this manual that they pulled off the wall to charter it. We are driven by two imperatives. The first imperative is to get it right for a number of reasons, including the safety of follow-on shuttle crews, not to mention the program and the continuation of the program. That imperative drives us to take our time and be very meticulous.

We have another imperative which is the welfare of the three astronauts who are on orbit right now who depend upon the shuttle system, at least for their transportation, if not for their supplies. In that sense, we have an imperative to move along as rapidly as we possibly can.

The members of my board who are in the professional–aviation accident investigation world, either civilian or military, both are used to the process where in the process of an accident investigation, if you find something that has something to do with the safety or air worthiness of the craft you're talking about, you release that advisory right away. And so, we haven't decided this ourselves. But we have, kind of, concluded that we can satisfy these two imperatives in our own process. We just–we think we can get at the business of timeliness as well as completeness. And this was just something for us to handle.

I'll ask Scott, for an example, the FAA chief of that aviation safety, whether or not this is a procedure which is reasonable.

WALLACE: Steve.

GEHMAN: I mean Steve, sorry.

WALLACE: I can refer to a couple of recent major civil aviation accidents where, in our case, we operate 32,000 airline flights per day in this country. And the continued safety of all those flights is the number one responsibility of the FAA.

So, for example, after the most recent air carrier accident, which was the Beech 1900 in Charlotte, we issued a directive requiring inspection of all of the elevator control systems of that fleet, further procedures to validate the weight and balance procedures. So it's very common for us to issue a directive on any safety issue identified well before the NTSB makes its finding of probable cause.

WALLACE: Here we don't have the same exact imperative of the operational fleet running 30,000 flights a day. But at the same time, we do not–we are not constrained at all to wait until we have made a probable cause finding to issue any safety recommendations or changes.

GEHMAN: Thank you.

QUESTION: You keep mentioning that you found no debris west of Fort Worth at this point. Is there a growing realization that, in fact, there may be no debris west of Fort Worth? And is there a sense that you may never find what may have been the first pieces of the shuttle to come apart?

GEHMAN: No, we're nowhere near that yet. We have reason to believe–we don't have proof, but we have reason to believe that we should keep looking west of Fort Worth.

The difficulty is that as we reconstruct this accident in greater detail–and this reconstruction will be on-going, I mean, so I'm not–I don't have anything to tell you about our reconstruction that you don't already know. But the more we–the more data, the more pictures we get, the more videos we get, the more we examined it, the engineering data, the more we realized when this incident started.

And so, if there are credible possibilities West of Fort Worth, we are going to energetically pursue them, because it's just possible that there's something out there. It's possible. So we're not giving up on that.

The second way I would respond to your question is that there's a lot of empty space west of Fort Worth. And what we are attempting to do now–I shouldn't say we're attempting to do now–what NASA has been attempting to do since day one is to be more predictive as to where we should look for the debris. We are trying to find radar tapes from Nellis Air Force Base.

GEHMAN: I mean, you know, we're looking every place to see whether or not any unusual radar returns. We're calling in many outside NASA, and we have outside people now to look at the predictive analysis of where the debris might have landed.

Heavy things travel faster, light things–some people say light things might go farther because once you're above the jet stream and you come down through the jet stream you might go farther. You know, you would think that heavy things would be farther east and light things would be west, but it turns out we're finding very, very light things all the way over in Louisiana.

So we're trying to be more predictive about where we look, because there's not many witnesses in the area between California and the Fort Worth area.

So, no, we haven't in all–we haven't concluded anything like there's nothing out there worth looking at. Absolutely not.

QUESTION: Could you go into a bit of detail about the other NASA assets listed on the flow chart that flow directly to the task force and don't come from the working groups through the MRT?

GEHMAN: Yes. The MRT has a structure on it that's related to this mishap, but all of NASA is at our disposal, not just people related to this mishap. That refers to, like, corporate NASA, including headquarters.

So when we start looking at safety programs, management issues, manning and personnel, I mean, all of those contributing kinds of things, we may get ourselves beyond the purview of the MRT, which has essentially mishap–a very, very strict mishap-related kinds of activities.

QUESTION: I want to go back to statements at the end of your opening remarks when you're talking about the videography you're collecting. There's some awfully intriguing stuff that's already in the public arena.

One, the Air Force photo that some, I think, are interpreting as not jagged edge but perhaps premature deployment of landing gear. There's some images of the shuttle at break-up that show the tips of both the left and the right wings off.

What is this telling you? It is already public, but maybe not collected under one umbrella. Is this important stuff? Is there a theory that you're working that involves any of this?

GEHMAN: It's important that we get as much of this videography as we possibly can because, in a lot of cases, what we're really looking at is the ionization–we're looking at the heat and flame, and we're not really looking at the shuttle at all.

GEHMAN: And so, usually it takes a considerable amount of work to see what you really–to be sure what you see, particularly in the early stages when the shuttle was extraordinarily high and it was dark–on that side of the United States it was dark–you're really looking at a bright light.

And other than to say that this is a area of fruitful investigation, I'm not going to comment on whether we have a favorite theory or anything like that right now. We don't have favorite theories. We are pursuing everything. We are pursuing everything.

I mean, even if we were to find what piece of debris fell off first, we still have to find the cause of it. And then we have to find a contributing cause of it. So it would certainly help us, but we have a lot of work to do, even if we are able to determine which tile came off first. To us, that's a lead. But it's–we have to go much deeper than that.

QUESTION: What kind of subpoena power or power to get documents, et cetera, will you have if you need that, if you have to compel people to give testimony and that sort of thing?

GEHMAN: We have all the authority we need over both NASA and its contractors. And as you know, NASA is largely contracted. And we have been advised by council that we have all the authority we need to do this.

Now, keep in mind that we are conducting this inquiry along the lines of a safety mishap investigation, which means that witnesses may be privileged. In other words, we may give witnesses privileged status in which they would–their statements would be non-attributed. In other cases, we'll have sworn testimony and verbatim testimony. But the procedures that a safety accident–a safety investigation are such that we want to find the causes of this, not the guilty parties.

As a matter of fact, if you look at our charter, we are specifically excluded from assigning responsibility or culpability.

GEHMAN: We are not looking for that. This is a safety investigation.

QUESTION: One of the credentials that you bring to this is the investigation of the Cole. And yet that would seem to be a very different kind of situation. What do the two, perhaps, have in common that I'm not seeing that might help you with this investigation?

GEHMAN: It is very different in detail. One–in one area, it's very similar. In the case of the investigation that General Crouch and I were the co-chairman of, the Cole Commission, we did not investigate what the crew of the Cole did, and we did not investigate what happened to the Cole. We were investigating essentially everyone above the Cole, all of–the Navy, the unified commanders, the JCS, the DIA. I mean, we were investigating whether or not the larger bureaucracies, the larger organizations had done everything that they were supposed to do to allow the Cole to have a safe port visit.

The similarity is there's–there's a similarity here in that part of our review will be a review of the larger organization to see whether or not they are managing a prudent and safe program. The difference is that we are tasked to find out what happened here. And that's the difference between the Cole.

So in the sense that I'm used to how bureaucracies work and my–the way I like to describe it is individuals don't need to worry about anything that this board is going to find. We aren't out to find any guilty people or find any negligence or culpability.

But if you have a secretary and a potted plant outside your office, then you're fair game.

QUESTION: Based on the data, the information you've seen, the pieces of debris that you've seen– and maybe any of the board members could chime in–at this point, can you say that you're fairly confident you will be able to find a cause of this accident and get flying again? Is there enough out there so that you won't come up with an unexplained anomaly as the cause of this disaster?

GEHMAN: I'm going to let the chief of Air Force safety and the chief of Navy safety make a comment upon their experience in getting to the bottom of accidents in which there have been less data than we have here.

GEHMAN: Ken?

HESS: I think your question is a very pertinent one to the board because of the wealth of information that's going to be out there for us to go and sift through and try to decide in a manner that will give us some conclusions.

We have, in our experience in the Air Force, on many times accounted what we most likely think may have happened, but you can never prove it with all certainty.

And so we're going likely get ourselves into areas of probable causes in any number of areas here in this particular mishap. Our charter is to try to find the cause, and to the extent that we can drill down and ask enough questions of why, we're going to attempt to do that.

But it is a probable outcome that we may not find the exact cause of this mishap. But we will have to let the information speak for itself on the course of the investigation.

GEHMAN: Admiral Turcotte, do you want to add?

TURCOTTE: I'd like to add a couple of things. You know, first of, in any investigation you go in and the very first thing you do is assume, make no assumptions. You make no judgments and you suspect everything.

So having said that, part of our task, if we do get to the point where we have not exactly found the mishap, we will have covered everything else.

We will have looked at those positives, ``Was it this, was it that?'' We'll have looked at those obvious things that people are looking at right now that's saying, ``Could not be a cause.'' So we will narrow the focus. If that gives you a better example.

Looking at the complexity of this, it is huge. It is one of the biggest debris fields that I think any of us had ever seen.

The complexity of the science and technology that goes into it is huge. But getting back to your original question, we're going to look at everything, and we're going to narrow it down to the most probable cause, if not the cause.

GEHMAN: Go ahead.

QUESTION: This is...

GEHMAN: I'm going to recognize General Barry here a second, then we'll get to the next question.

BARRY: One of the things that people have asked before, ``Is there a black box on the Challenger?'' And there wasn't, and on the Columbia there isn't.

What those great space machines have been able to do is they have tremendous sensors on them, so right now I think there's on the order of 4,000 sensors that we're going to be able to take advantage of and help piece that together.

So that's very unique.

QUESTION: Admiral Gehman, have you already tasked anything to the independent analysis team that you were talking about to redo analysis, and has that included the foam or anything to do with orbital debris?

GEHMAN: As of today, no, we have not tasked any independent analysis at this time. That's an ongoing issue. As the investigation begins to form some avenues that are–that as we begin to point in a certain direction or to key on certain causes, that's when we are going to independently verify the foundations that lead us down that road. We are not interested in independently verifying everything that NASA does. No, we're going to wait until we have matters that the board thinks bears on–bears directly on our conclusions.

QUESTION: Admiral, can you provide us a fish bone chart of all the possibilities you are looking at? I realize it must be in the hundreds, if not thousands. But I am just trying to get an order of magnitude so we don't have any pet theories or the favorite theory of the day items.

And obviously I think you–I guess you realize by now, because the high interest in manned space flight and all the reporters, yes, we would like to have daily briefings or at least briefings as often as practical.

GEHMAN: We are quite aware of the NASA fault tree system. We have been briefed on it. We understand how it works. We think it's a great investigatory tool. We have developed–we haven't developed our own fault tree. But when we organized ourselves into these boards, we felt like all possibilities or all fruitful areas would be included in one of these boards.

So if that answers your question whether or not we have written down a list of all of the possible causes, we haven't done that. We haven't written–sat down and written out a list of all possible causes. But we are fully aware that NASA has a process for that. And we are watching over that. We are overlooking on that process.

QUESTION: Just a follow-up on that. Do I understand correctly then the fault tree analysis that was under way at JSC is still under way, but it's not a tool that your board is planning to use?

GEHMAN: The fault tree analysis process is still underway. And we are going to over-watch that process. We are not going to direct it. We are not going to make them do anything that they aren't already doing. It's their independent way of eliminating every possibility.

But as we begin our–as our investigation begins to bore down, when we find a branch or a twig on the fault tree which they have closed out, we may re-open it. We may cause them to come back and explain to us why they eliminated that. If we are happy with that explanation, that'll be the end of it. If we think that that requires independent verification, we'll go out and get independent verification of it. And if we want it reopened and we want more work done, then they will re-open it.

But this will be a process as the board bores down vertically into different subject matters in accordance with this sub-board arrangement that I indicated, we will be in over-watch of the fault tree process. They do not, they are not doing kind of a ``mother may I'' kind of a process with us, nor do we want it that way.

It kind of gets back to the question of press conferences. We are going to drive an investigation ourselves using all of the resources of NASA and independent experts as we see fit. We don't want to be on the receiving end of a tidal wave of unrelated data that we couldn't possibly digest.

So the process we are going to use, is we are going to drive and drive it down and then avail ourselves of the work that NASA has done and then independently verify anything that we feel needs to be independently verified.

QUESTION: Admiral, I have a question. I was wondering, if you got a sharper picture of the shuttle re-entering like via the Air Force corrective optic?

GEHMAN: I am going to have to just take that question right now, whether or not there is a better image than that fuzzy Air Force picture. I have not seen one myself. I have seen images–lots of images. But whether or not there is one, I don't know. We'll just have to take that question and get–I don't want to say something that's–that turns out to be not factual.

I am not aware of any relevant or pertinent picture that's any better than that one. As I said, most of the stills and the video that we become aware of are really pictures of the plasma flow.

GEHMAN: I mean, there are bright lights in the sky. They're not really pictures of the orbiter.

QUESTION: Admiral Gehman, you didn't get the second half of that question on whether you would release an image like that if you–if you have one.

But my question is, given that you have said that you will release information on major finds of debris, will you tell us what you think the key pieces of debris that have been found so far are, identify them, including any that may not have been revealed yet and say why you think they're important?

GEHMAN: The answer to the first part of the question is, yes, we will continue this open policy of releasing information and debris statistics and any significant photography or something that–just like NASA has been doing before.

This is an open process, and unlike military safety accident investigations, there is no part two to this investigation. There is no privileged unreleasable part to this.

So it's all a matter of the public record. And when we get something and we will release all of this stuff on a continuous basis. And the fact that we don't have anything to hand you today means we don't have anything that particularly pertinent.

A lot of the things I've been talking about are work products, that is the time line, for example, is what Ron Dittemore released last week in cartoon form was–I mean, they quickly rushed and put one together quickly so you could understand that.

Now they're doing very, very detailed analysis. They're trying to combine different censors. I mean, they're trying to make a time line that has different inputs so as that becomes available, we'll release them.

So work products can only be released, you know, as the work goes on.

If there are other photographs that we have, we'll release all of those things. So I hope that answers your question.

The second part of your question, again, I'm not going to comment on any particular piece of evidence or any particular piece of debris, which is more interesting to us than another one.

The priorities that were announced early in this investigation, obviously the first thing was the human remains priorities. And then anything that seems to have a data recorder in it or has information in it. Tiles, wing sections, those are all still the priorities. And they hopefully will lead to the most useful conclusions.

GEHMAN: But our experience up here, almost everyone of us has had an experience where following the hottest lead and working on the hottest theory turned out to be completely wrong, and we went off and found out some completely different cause.

So we're very careful not to fall in love with any particular scenario.

QUESTION: Admiral, can you or perhaps some other members of your board tell us what kind of condition the debris is in? And by that I mean is it molten and beyond recognition, or does it look more like debris you see in a regular accident?

GEHMAN: You want to comment on that? Do you want to talk? You want to comment on that? Did you hear it? Did you want to comment? Yes.

I'll ask Dr. Hallock, who has seen lots of debris and testified a lot of times as to whether or not this is– what the debris looked like–Jim, when we looked at it?

HALLOCK: Well, as you've heard before, the debris consists of everything from very, very tiny, tiny pieces of things up to some fairly large pieces.

You've got to remember this is a craft that's just been coming in and when it starting to breaking up we're talking about something that's going at mach 20.

It is something that's really moving fast, and obviously it makes it something that a lot of us have really not seen debris from.

A lot of the pieces are–when you come down–and we've been able to have a chance to look at them, are in a form that we are able to identify what we think it is.

And the reason you can do that is that it is not–I think the questioner used the term molten form–it is not that. These are pieces that have obviously come through a long journey in a very warm environment and then obviously hit the Earth and got probably added more bends and bumps and stuff to it.

So there are pieces there that look surprisingly pristine, as well as pieces that I've no idea what it would be. So we're seeing the entire spectrum.

QUESTION: Admiral, can you give us any clarification on some of the items of debris that have been found in recent days? For instance, the landing gear compartment cover, whether or not it's been identified as to whether that was from the left or the right side of the orbiter.

Also, an object that was found Sunday initially identified as one of the five general-purpose computers, then later said, ``No, it was actually an avionics box.'' Was it indeed IDed as an avionics box? And anything further for the families in the way of human remains found and identification?

GEHMAN: I'm not–I don't have the knowledge to tell you. We can get for you a review of what we know about specific pieces of equipment, which have been recovered, whether it's left landing gear or- -I mean, we can catalogue that for you.

I can tell you that the–that the piece that was previously identified as a general purpose computer, and that's why we were interested in it was because we thought it might still have data in it, turns out to have been one of the communication antenna electronic boxes. It turns out actually to have been the KU band antenna, which is an antenna which is only put out when the shuttle is on orbit. And then has to be brought back in in order to close the doors. So that was mistakenly identified. And I am told this morning by the MRT that that is indeed–that was not a general purpose computer which was found, but was part of KU band antenna electronic control system. So other than that, we will catalogue for you the more–specifically, our current identification of the more interesting pieces. They are pieces that have already been disclosed to the press. We'll just review for you that it's the left–if we know it's the left wing or not, and when we find out which part of the wing it came from, we'll tell you that.

And so we'll–Mr. Nesbitt (ph) and I'll take that, and we'll get back–get that back to you.

QUESTION: As you know, some of the key insights of the Rogers Commission came from a theoretical physicist, the late Dick Feynman. Are there any plans to add a bench scientist like him to the board? And if not, why don't you think it's necessary this time around?

(LAUGHTER)

GEHMAN: That's a–all right, I won't comment on that question. I want to comment on the structure of the question in case I get the answer wrong.

Yes, we have under consideration the expansion of this board to include–either expanding the board or expanding our panel of experts to include people like theoretical physicists and high altitude flight experts who are not associated with NASA.

There are disciplines out there not only in universities, but in other disciplines, that have similar knowledge bases and expertise that don't have anything to do with NASA.

GEHMAN: For example, intercontinental ballistic missile reentry experts, even though those are not very nice things to talk about, they do have to come back in through the atmosphere at very, very high speeds, and they have to survive, and they have to go where we want them to go.

So there are experts who know how that happens, how that regime works, that have nothing to do with NASA. And we do have under consideration to expand both the board and our panel of experts, and specifically to get into some–to get some people around us who have this theoretical kind of knowledge who can help us make the right inquiry.

But most important is to double-check our conclusions and make sure that our conclusions are based on good science. That's really what we're concerned about.

QUESTION: I'd like to ask you to go into some detail about the information technology you're going to use to solve this puzzle. Do you expect to build your own data processing capability or data bases to hold and analyze the data? And what about the software used in this fault tree analysis or probabilistic risk analysis that NASA's using, and the contractors who are running it?

GEHMAN: That would take me more time to answer that question than I can do justice to. But let me say that we looked at the structure of the Rogers team, and then we attempted to overlay IT over top of it.

We're going to use sophisticated ways to catalogue and document data so we can do key word searches, we can cross check data.

One of the things that's high on my list of concern is correlating and cross checking data.

There are so many engineers and scientists working on this program and this accident investigation, that I'm quite concerned that we're able to relate one piece of data to another.

We're going to use IT procedures to build a library, a library of documents and facts and studies and analysis, that we have so we can delve into them.

And we're also going to use some IT management systems for reaching decisions on the group, among the group.

GEHMAN: There are ways to do that faster, quicker that allow group consensus, group brainstorming, and things like that, all of which were not available at the time of the Rogers Commission.

QUESTION: A quick question, where do we stand with respect to the 32 second gap? Is this something that your board is going to independently analyze? Or are you going to take a look at see what NASA has done?

GEHMAN: We, like everything else NASA has–is doing and will do, we will–we will evaluate whether or not it needs to be independently verified. And if we're satisfied with what NASA is doing, that's the end of it.

The analysis goes on. As of our last report, there is no usable data in that 32 second stream. That's my current information on that. And if that changes, you will learn about it.

QUESTION: Admiral, tomorrow the Congress now, hearing starts. One of the purposes of that hearing I understand is to do the investigation of the accident, including the root cause and managerial problems of NASA. How are you going to relate your board to the combination of a hearing? Is there concerns that some things of both entities contradicts?

GEHMAN: I'm sorry that the audio is garbled. I believe the question was, ``How are we going to relate our investigation to the congressional hearings that are going to be held?''

Is that, is that what I heard? Is that the question?

GEHMAN: Questioner, if I got that–if I'm answering the right question, would you confirm that for me?

QUESTION: The question is just as you said. How are you going to relate your work to the Congress's new hearings?

GEHMAN: We will make ourselves available to the oversight committees and any other member of Congress that is interested in what we're doing. I suspect that the Congress and the congressional hearings are completely independent. And that they would expect that as we find things that we would make them available to them.

The only relationship is that we work for them. And when they want to know something, we'll tell them.

Otherwise, they–they will go their own way and pursue their own–pursue their own areas of interest as will we.

But as I indicated in my opening remarks, the Congress of the United States is one of constituencies, and we know that. And if they want frequent and–access and frequent reports, that's what they'll get.

QUESTION: Admiral, or for anyone else on the board, you mentioned earlier in this presentation, that you have reason to believe you should keep looking west of Fort Worth for items of debris from the shuttle. Can you give us, either from you, Admiral, or from other members who have expertise in this, as much detail as you can about the basis for that reason?

GEHMAN: Well, the reason I said that and the reason I couched it in rather vague terms is because some of the sightings of the report that the orbiter was shedding debris, some of those sightings appear to be credible. And we're–we are treating them as credible. And we would love to find a piece, something on the ground–well, I don't say we would love to find–but it would be very important if we found something on the ground that we could relate to one of these early shedding reports.

GEHMAN: But as of now that doesn't exist. As of now we can't find anything on the ground, so we can't relate it to any early events. Obviously, if we could do this, it would give us some areas to direct our investigation. It would be very interesting to us if we could relate some of the very credible reports of early shedding to an object which we found on the ground. But as of right now that's not possible.

QUESTION: A question for Scott Hubbard. The heat shield tiles will be, obviously, a focal point of the investigation and we know they were developed here at Ames. Director Scott Hubbard, characterize, if you will, the role that Ames can play in this investigation vis-a-vis the heat tiles?

HUBBARD: Well, let me start off by just reaffirming what Admiral Gehman said early that for the purpose of this investigation I'm wearing a board hat here. I have delegated the operations of the center to my acting deputy and associate director. And so, while I'm here with the Accident Investigation Board I am fully and totally dedicated to serving whatever needs arise in that activity. With respect to the kinds of technologies that were developed over the years, not all but many of the tiles that are on the various orbiters came out of technologies developed and tested at Ames, and through the box that is called the Mishap Response Team there that is feeding in through the task force, they are reaching out to all the NASA centers that have expertise and I'm quite confident that they are going to the people at Ames and getting whatever they need in terms of how the tiles were formulated, how they could be tested, what their various characteristics at different temperatures are, and so forth.

So I think as the days and weeks go by some of that data may, in fact, help the investigation.

QUESTION: Admiral, can you tell us will you and the board be coming here on Friday, what will be the purpose of your visit, what kinds of things will you be doing and what will be the focus–what are the things you will be focusing on here?

GEHMAN: The answer is yes, we will be there this week. The purpose of our visit is essentially educational. As I indicated in my opening remarks we are busy here looking at various–pursuing various investigatory themes and avenues, and people are telling us things for which some us have no personal experience; that is we've never seen an external tank and we need to know what they do at Marshall and all that kind of stuff. So early on in the investigation we have to balance our requirement to be at our desks working and pulling strings with the requirement to educate ourselves. One of the advantages of an independent panel like this is we come to the table with no cultural or project biases. Everything's on the table. We aren't in the least bit impressed by things that couldn't possibly happen.

One of the disadvantages is you've got to bring us up to speed, and that's why we're coming down to Huntsville.

QUESTION: Admiral, you've got an org chart, you've added some people. You've said you will be doing things. Could you give an example of a direction you have already given to people at NASA to do this or don't do that other than releasing some material that isn't directly related to the investigation?

GEHMAN: Right. We have already given our task force team there tranches of questions, witnesses, data that we want to see. And we've already, on a regular basis, daily basis–I mean, not even, more often than daily–whenever it comes up we have passed on specifics on investigatory matters that we want to follow up on in the future, and they are gathering those people.

As you may be aware, I think that Ron Dittemore indicated that immediately after the incident that one of the first thing they do in their contingency action plan is they have everybody at every console write down a witness statement immediately–I mean, right before they leave. OK? Well, we want to see those witness statements. So it's that kind of thing. On a continuing regular basis we have already tasked the system to start producing evidentiary stuff and also matters that are just the beginning of a string of investigation. I'm not going to tell what they are, but they are that type of stuff.

Each of the sub-boards–the sub-boards they all meet–they meet among themselves. They agree upon what they want to work on and the kinds of things they're interested in; they write these things down; we pass them to the task force; and then the task force keeps track that we get everything that we ask for in a timely manner.

QUESTION: Sir, you mentioned that you will benefit from the large number of sensors that are embedded in the shuttle structure in the course of the investigation. Are you concerned, however, that there are not sensors on the leading edge of the wing where that reinforced carbon material is, and is that something that you feel like could represent a dead end of sorts as you pursue your investigation?

GEHMAN: You're really asking me for a conclusion, and we're a long way away from anything like that.

GEHMAN: It's just premature for me to even make any kind of speculation about what we would rather of had. We don't even know what we've got, much less what we don't have.

QUESTION: Will the debris from the payload experiments that were housed in space hab, such as film, be released to the science teams? And when might some images that would be processed from that film and data be released to the media?

GEHMAN: The answer is yes. The science experiments, which were in the payload section, in the space two space habs will be released in accordance with the material release procedures, which we already have in place, and I've already released scores of things–after we, as a board, determine that either we have extracted all of the information we need from them or there isn't any information of any value. For example, almost all of the ground support equipment for the experiments that's in Kennedy that was used for training or mockups or controls specimens, we've released almost all of that already. So, yes, I expect that unless we find something in there that's relevant to the investigation, it would be released.

QUESTION: I understand that some or all of you may have done landing simulations this morning. Just wondering if you could describe to me what you may have learned from that experience.

GEHMAN: Yes. We broke up into teams and got briefings and simulation flights. We were particularly interested, of course, in the reentry piece of it because we wanted to visualize how busy the astronauts are, what it feels like, what are the checks that they're doing, because we're going to go, of course, through the crew performance factors very, very carefully, as well as the mission controls' performance. And so, we wanted to get a feel of what that's like.

So it was very rudimentary. It was nothing like astronaut training. But we did either three or four complete profiles in which we took turns moving up into the front of it so–what we could see–so we could all feel what it was like in the same simulators that use. Only when they do it, of course, every time they do it, someone injects a causality or a mishap, whereas they were kind enough to just let us go ahead and bring it on into landing without any mishaps. So that was useful.

And I'm sure that the members of the board who are going to be operations panel will go back many, many times to go back to do that again, to see if we can in any way dis

cern what happened on this flight. But this one was an orientation visit and we all learned a lot. As I said in a press conference in east Texas, this board is trying to personalize this accident; that's why we went out and looked at debris.

QUESTION: Admiral, you've got an org chart, you've added some people. You've said you will be doing things. Could you give an example of a direction you have already given to people at NASA to do this or don't do that other than releasing some material that isn't directly related to the investigation?

GEHMAN: Right. We have already given our task force team there tranches of questions, witnesses, data that we want to see. And we've already, on a regular basis, daily basis–I mean, not even, more often than daily–whenever it comes up we have passed on specifics on investigatory matters that we want to follow up on in the future, and they are gathering those people.

As you may be aware, I think that Ron Dittemore indicated that immediately after the incident that one of the first thing they do in their contingency action plan is they have everybody at every console write down a witness statement immediately–I mean, right before they leave. OK? Well, we want to see those witness statements. So it's that kind of thing. On a continuing regular basis we have already tasked the system to start producing evidentiary stuff and also matters that are just the beginning of a string of investigation. I'm not going to tell what they are, but they are that type of stuff.

Each of the sub-boards–the sub-boards they all meet–they meet among themselves. They agree upon what they want to work on and the kinds of things they're interested in; they write these things down; we pass them to the task force; and then the task force keeps track that we get everything that we ask for in a timely manner.

QUESTION: Sir, you mentioned that you will benefit from the large number of sensors that are embedded in the shuttle structure in the course of the investigation. Are you concerned, however, that there are not sensors on the leading edge of the wing where that reinforced carbon material is, and is that something that you feel like could represent a dead end of sorts as you pursue your investigation?

GEHMAN: You're really asking me for a conclusion, and we're a long way away from anything like that.

GEHMAN: It's just premature for me to even make any kind of speculation about what we would rather of had. We don't even know what we've got, much less what we don't have.

QUESTION: Will the debris from the payload experiments that were housed in space hab, such as film, be released to the science teams? And when might some images that would be processed from that film and data be released to the media?

GEHMAN: The answer is yes. The science experiments, which were in the payload section, in the space two space habs will be released in accordance with the material release procedures, which we already have in place, and I've already released scores of things–after we, as a board, determine that either we have extracted all of the information we need from them or there isn't any information of any value. For example, almost all of the ground support equipment for the experiments that's in Kennedy that was used for training or mockups or controls specimens, we've released almost all of that already. So, yes, I expect that unless we find something in there that's relevant to the investigation, it would be released.

QUESTION: I understand that some or all of you may have done landing simulations this morning. Just wondering if you could describe to me what you may have learned from that experience.

GEHMAN: Yes. We broke up into teams and got briefings and simulation flights. We were particularly interested, of course, in the reentry piece of it because we wanted to visualize how busy the astronauts are, what it feels like, what are the checks that they're doing, because we're going to go, of course, through the crew performance factors very, very carefully, as well as the mission controls' performance. And so, we wanted to get a feel of what that's like.

So it was very rudimentary. It was nothing like astronaut training. But we did either three or four complete profiles in which we took turns moving up into the front of it so–what we could see–so we could all feel what it was like in the same simulators that use. Only when they do it, of course, every time they do it, someone injects a causality or a mishap, whereas they were kind enough to just let us go ahead and bring it on into landing without any mishaps. So that was useful.

And I'm sure that the members of the board who are going to be operations panel will go back many, many times to go back to do that again, to see if we can in any way discern what happened on this flight. But this one was an orientation visit and we all learned a lot.

As I said in a press conference in east Texas, this board is trying to personalize this accident; that's why we went out and looked at debris.

GEHMAN: We weren't going to solve this mystery by us personally looking at a piece of debris, but we wanted to take aboard the violence that's involved in flight at mach 20, and the same with the simulator. I mean, we want to personalize and understand what happened. This is a personal thing for us, and that's part of the way that we personalize it.

QUESTION: Can you give us any guidance on the piece of space debris that was tracked for two days following its initial orbit, what you might think it might be, what the possibilities are?

GEHMAN: No, I won't, other than to say that inquiry is going on in many venues, not only in NASA. As a matter of fact, my friend from the Air Force Space Command here may want to say something about that. But we are trying to determine whether or not that was a normal thing. As you are aware, from time to time the space shuttle does eject things, and we are working that very hard. We're very interested in that, among everything else. But no, I wouldn't put any more weight on that than any other thing.

Duane, do you want to say anything?

DEAL: Certainly. There is a great wealth of data that the Air Force Space Command is looking at right now. They've gone back and done a complete total de-log of everything that went on during the space shuttle mission. As a matter of fact, when you look at the wearing diagram attached to the analysis and support team–it doesn't show on this particular chart–there's a separate Department of Defense Columbia investigation support team, and they're out there analyzing this data trying to bring in everything that they can that the DOD may have to offer, everywhere from approach radars to any type of airborne or sea borne assets to the space surveillance network that we have around the world as well.

What their normal mission is is to do de-confliction for the space shuttle to make sure that the space shuttle is not going to hit any objects that are known in lower earth orbit. What they've done now is they're going back working with the NASA engineers to de-log their systems, every single radar hit that they got on the space shuttle and look at that, and they'll be providing that to you eventually.

QUESTION: Admiral, could you see a scenario where this investigation was long-running, you had not pinned down the cause, but you had eliminated some factors where you could turn to NASA and tell them they could proceed with another shuttle mission while you finish your work? Is that a possibility?

GEHMAN: I don't think that we are going to adjudicate the resumption of flight operations.

GEHMAN: We will make a report as to under what conditions flight operations–we think flight operations may resume if you do the following 6, 12, 21, 62 things. And then the administrator of NASA in his chain of command will adjudicate whether or not flight operations should resume. If we're fortunate enough to find what we think is the direct cause of this accident,and we think that there are other contributing causes but they're not, it's possible that we could be in session for several months while we run some of this stuff down. But as we indicated before, as is done in commercial and civilian aircraft accidents, we would issue an immediate advisory that we think we found what the problem is, and if you fix it, you can go ahead. I would be very nervous about doing that, however, because I'm quite keen on the subject of eliminating causes, and it's going to take a considerable amount of time to eliminate things.

I mean, even if we found the broken bracket or something, in order to convince us that was the only cause of this accident would require some really hard head-scratching on this board's part. And I for one would be not quick. I mean, just because we find some individual thing that broke that doesn't mean that was the only cause of the accident. And I would be very, very nervous about reporting to the government of the United States that this is the broken bracket and this is what caused it and it was the only cause. I would be very cautious about that, and I think my board members would also. So the scenario that you gave me would be one that we would be very leery of. It's possible, but we'd be very leery of it.

END

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