CANCELLATION OF THE REQUEST FOR IMAGERY

¶At 8:30 a.m., the NASA Department of Defense liaison officer called USSTRATCOM and cancelled the request for imagery. The reason given for the cancellation was that NASA had identified its own in-house resources and no longer needed the militaryʼs help. The NASA request to the Department of Defense to prepare to image Columbia on-orbit was both made and rescinded within 90 minutes.

¶The Board has determined that the following sequence of events likely occurred within that 90- minute period. Linda Ham asked Lambert Austin if he knew who was requesting the imagery. After admitting his participation in helping to make the imagery request outside the official chain of command and without first gaining Hamʼs permission, Austin referred to his conversation with United Space Alliance Shuttle Integration manager Bob White on Flight Day Six, in which White had asked Austin, in response to Whiteʼs Debris Assessment Team employee concerns, what it would take to get Orbiter imagery.

¶Even though Austin had already informed Ham of the request for imagery, Ham later called Mission Management Team members Ralph Roe, Manager of the Space Shuttle Vehicle Engineering Office, Loren Shriver, United Space Alliance Deputy Program Manager for Shuttle, and David Moyer, the on-duty Mission Evaluation Room manager, to determine the origin of the request and to confirm that there was a "requirement" for a request. Ham also asked Flight Director Phil Engelauf if he had a "requirement" for imagery of Columbiaʼs left wing. These individuals all stated that they had not requested imagery, were not aware of any "official" requests for imagery, and could not identify a "requirement" for imagery. Linda Ham later told several individuals that nobody had a requirement for imagery.

¶What started as a request by the Intercenter Photo Working Group to seek outside help in obtaining images on Flight Day Two in anticipation of analystsʼ needs had become by Flight Day Six an actual engineering request by members of the Debris Assessment Team, made informally through Bob White to Lambert Austin, and formally in Rodney Rochaʼs e-mail to Paul Shack. These requests had then caused Lambert Austin and Wayne Hale to contact Department of Defense representatives. When Ham officially terminated the actions that the Department of Defense had begun, she effectively terminated both the Intercenter Photo Working Group request and the Debris Assessment Team request. While Ham has publicly stated she did not know of the Debris Assessment Team membersʼ desire for imagery, she never asked them directly if the request was theirs, even though they were the team analyzing the foam strike.

¶Also on Flight Day Seven, Ham raised concerns that the extra time spent maneuvering Columbia to make the left wing visible for imaging would unduly impact the mission schedule; for example, science experiments would have to stop while the imagery was taken. According to personal notes obtained by the Board:

154

¶"Linda Ham said it was no longer being pursued since even if we saw something, we couldnʼt do anything about it. The Program didnʼt want to spend the resources."

¶Shuttle managers, including Ham, also said they were looking for very small areas on the Orbiter and that past imagery resolution was not very good. The Board notes that no individuals in the STS-107 operational chain of command had the security clearance necessary to know about National imaging capabilities. Additionally, no evidence has been uncovered that anyone from NASA, United Space Alliance, or Boeing sought to determine the expected quality of images and the difficulty and costs of obtaining Department of Defense assistance. Therefore, members of the Mission Management Team were making critical decisions about imagery capabilities based on little or no knowledge.

¶The following is an entry in the Flight Director Handover Log.

¶"NASA Resident Office, Peterson AFB called and SOI at USSPACECOM was officially turned off. This went all the way up to 4 star General. Post flight we will write a memo to

¶USSPACECOM telling them whom they should take SOI requests from."50 [AFB=Air Force

¶Base, SOI=Spacecraft Object Identification, USSPACECOM=U.S. Space Command]

¶After canceling the Department of Defense imagery request, Linda Ham continued to explore whether foam strikes posed a safety of flight issue. She sent an e-mail to Lambert Austin and Ralph Roe.

-----Original Message--- From: HAM, LINDA J. (JSC-MA2) (NASA) Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 9:33 AM To: AUSTIN, LAMBERT D. (JSC-MS) (NASA); ROE, RALPH R. (JSC-MV) (NASA) Subject: ET Foam Loss

Can we say that for any ET foam lost, no 'safety of flight' damage can occur to the Orbiter because of the density?

¶[ET=External Tank]

¶Responses included the following.

-----Original Message----- From: ROE, RALPH R. (JSC-MV) (NASA) Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 9:38 AM To: SCHOMBURG, CALVIN (JSC-EA) (NASA) Subject: FW: ET Foam Loss

¶Calvin,

I wouldn't think we could make such a generic statement but can we bound it some how by size or acreage?

¶[Acreage=larger areas of foam coverage]

¶Ron Dittermore e-mailed Linda Ham the following.

¶From: DITTEMORE, RONALD D. (JSC-MA) (NASA) Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 10:15 AM To: HAM, LINDA J. (JSC-MA2) (NASA) Subject: RE: ET Briefing - STS-112 Foam Loss

¶Another thought, we need to make sure that the density of the ET foam cannot damage the tile to where it is an impact to the orbiter...Lambert and Ralph need to get some folks working with ET.

¶The following is an e-mail from Calvin Schomburg to Ralph Roe.

¶-----Original Message----- From: SCHOMBURG, CALVIN (JSC-EA) (NASA) Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 10:53 AM To: ROE, RALPH R. (JSC-MV) (NASA) Subject: RE: ET Foam Loss

¶No-the amount of damage ET foam can cause to the TPS material-tiles is based on the amount of impact energy-the size of the piece and its velocity( from just after pad clear until about 120 seconds- after that it will not hit or it will not enough energy to cause any damage)-it is a pure kinetic problem- there is a size that can cause enough damage to a tile that enough of the material is lost that we could burn a hole through the skin and have a bad day-(loss of vehicle and crew -about 200-400 tile locations( out of the 23,000 on the lower surface)-the foam usually fails in small popcorn pieces-that is why it is vented-to make small hits-the two or three times we have been hit with a piece as large as the one this flight-we got a gouge about 8-10 inches long about 2 inches wide and 3/4 to an 1 inch deep across two or three tiles. That is what I expect this time-nothing worst. If that is all we get we have have no problem-will have to replace a couple of tiles but nothing else.

¶[ET=External Tank, TPS=Thermal Protection System]

¶The following is a response from Lambert Austin to Linda Ham.

¶-----Original Message----- From: AUSTIN, LAMBERT D. (JSC-MS) (NASA) Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 3:22 PM To: HAM, LINDA J. (JSC-MA2) (NASA) Cc: WALLACE, RODNEY O. (ROD) (JSC-MS2) (NASA); NOAH, DONALD S. (DON) (JSC-MS) (NASA) Subject: RE: ET Foam Loss

¶NO. I will cover some of the pertinent rationale....there could be more if I spent more time thinking about it. Recall this issue has been discussed from time to time since the inception of the basic "no debris" requirement in Vol. X and at each review the SSP has concluded that it is not possible to PRECLUDE a potential catastrophic event as a result of debris impact damage to the flight elements. As regards the Orbiter, both windows and tiles are areas of concern.

¶You can talk to Cal Schomberg and he will verify the many times we have covered this in SSP reviews. While there is much tolerance to window and tile damage, ET foam loss can result in impact damage that under subsequent entry environments can lead to loss of structural integrity of the Orbiter area impacted or a penetration in a critical function area that results in loss of that function. My recollection of the most critical Orbiter bottom acreage areas are the wing spar, main landing gear door seal and RCC panels...of course Cal can give you a much better rundown.

¶We can and have generated parametric impact zone characterizations for many areas of the Orbiter for a few of our more typical ET foam loss areas. Of course, the impact/damage significance is always a function of debris size and density, impact velocity, and impact angle--these latter 2 being a function of the flight time at which the ET foam becomes debris. For STS-107 specifically, we have generated this info and provided it to Orbiter. Of course, even this is based on the ASSUMPTION [continued on next page] that the location and size of the debris is the same as occurred on STS-112------this cannot be verified until we receive the on-board ET separation R e pphoto

o r t Vevidence o l u m e I post A uOrbiter g u s t 2landing.³³ See John M. Logsdon, "The Space Shuttle Program: A Policy Failure?" Report, 1985. Science, May 30, 1986 (Vol. 232), pp. 1099-1105 for an account of this 14 The quote is from page 2 of the We Deliver brochure, reproduced in decision process. Most of the information and quotes in this section are Exploring the Unknown Volume IV, p. 423. taken from this article. 15 NASA Johnson Space Center, "Technology Influences on the Space President George H. W. Bush, "Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing," Washington, D.C., July 20, 1989.Show full note We are requesting that this 1 5 5

¶be expedited. I have the STS-107 Orbiter impact map based on the assumptions noted herein being

156

Orbiter area impacted or a penetration in a critical function area that results in loss of that function. My recollection of the most critical Orbiter bottom acreage areas are the wing spar, main landing gear door seal and RCC panels...of course Cal COLUMBIA can give you a much better rundown.