Transcript

STS-107 COLUMBIA ACCIDENT UPDATE
NASA HEADQUARTERS
FEBRUARY 5, 2003

Robert Mirelson, NASA News Chief
Maj. Gen. Mike Kostelnik, Deputy Associate Administrator,
Office of Space Flight
Dr. Howard Ross, Acting Association Deputy Administrator
for Science Office of Biological & Physical Research

ROBERT MIRELSON: Good morning and welcome to NASA Headquarters. I'm the NASA News Chief, Doc Mirelson. Today's update will be on the Space Shuttle Columbia's mishap, but before we begin, I'd just like to take a minute and go over the guidelines for the folks that are joining us out at the centers.

After the speakers do their presentation, I'll take questions here at Headquarters. After a few questions, I'll cut to the centers and take two questions from each of the NASA centers that have joined us, and then I'll return to Headquarters and take some more questions here. Just a reminder here at the Headquarters, I've got some folks handling microphones. Please wait for the microphones, when I call on you to state your question, and if you would, please state your name and your affiliation so the speakers know who they're talking to.

With that, I'd like to introduce our deputy administrator for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, retired Maj. General Mike Kostelnik on my immediate left, and joining him today at the table is Dr. Howard Ross, our acting deputy associate administrator for science in the Office of Biological and Physical Research. Dr. Ross, in his portion, will address some of the science issues that you've raised about the science experiments that were on board Columbia.

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well good morning. Since I was just with you last evening, there haven't been a great deal of developments, but I would like to kind of bring you up on where we are this morning.

First, to the field. Now that the teams are in place and actively working, we're starting to get the command posts set up with all the agencies and I think there is, in talking to the leadership on the field on-site, there is really an unprecedented experience and cooperation between these federal -- various federal, state and local authorities.

The senior national rep this morning thought that we would have by today more than 2500 people from all types of activities involved in this effort. Again, I'm happy to report most of the public safety issues have been put to rest. We've done a lot of early collection around schools. Schools are open as normal in Texas today, thoroughfares have been cleared and we're actively now in the process of collecting, tagging and removing the equipment to our collection sites at Barksdale Air Force Base in La. and at Carswell in Fort Worth.

At the same time, this process is ongoing under the direction of the NASA Mission Mishap Investigation Team, they are also in concert with the Mission Response Team out at the Johnson Space Center actively looking at the various pieces, putting red tags on those that are very key and instrumental to helping the engineers and scientists understand what led to this event. Those are being specially tagged for early analysis at one of the collection sites.

The operation has been, I think, a great success and now it's at full steam, so I can expect that this will continue unabated for the next weeks and we'll get these sites cleaned up very quickly.

As I mentioned to you last night, we did send some teams out to the west to evaluate those sites in Calif. and Ariz. Unfortunately because of the time delays, differences over there, I did not have an update on that, but you can expect that this afternoon, what we found out on those early sites. And of course this does extend the debris field much further west than what we had originally thought, and obviously any material from the early part of that event would lead us to perhaps the earliest, you know, part of the cause and so we have a great deal of interest in that material and are looking at that, you know, very carefully.

An update on the engineering activity from this morning. The program engineers are back at work aggressively looking at and again they're focusing on the left wing area trying to, from the existing sensor information we have and the data we have, trying to map out the timeline of the failures across the left wing. They're doing loads analysis from the flight control inputs focusing, trying to determine what were the loads and the heat sources, trying to focus from a backwards analysis, if you'll have it, where the start of the events on the left wing were.

And we're keeping all our options open. We're going through a wide variety of things both in the ascent and descent, and you'll hear more of that this afternoon in the technical presentations by Mr. Ron Dittemore.

I think you also noticed yesterday and continuing today that the now independent chartered group, the Columbia Accident Investigating Board, is on scene and rapidly transitioning to assume full responsibility and control of not only the mishap scene but the results and analysis that will help them determine what the end result will be. Adm. Gehman is in place, his team is in place, and we are in the process today of facilitating a new entity, a task force, which will be facilitating his interface between the board, the independent board and the NASA team that will do the research and the data collection for them. I believe that charter has been put on line, so that should be available to the media for review today.

During the previous couple activities, there has been a lot of interest expressed in the science that was done on 107. It was a unique mission in regards to the most recent Shuttle missions we had which had been dedicated to assembly on the International Space Station, but as part of a complete portfolio of science not only stand alone but what we're doing on the International Space Station today in its current configuration as we continue to build, but more importantly what we expect to do on this International Space Station when it becomes more mature.

There are many questions about the specific science projects that was done; was the data in fact totally lost? Was it collected? Many of these things were issues that you have addressed. In fact, there has been an ongoing debate on the value added of the International Space Station in particular to science; is it a science-driven activity? What can we accomplish up there? And what is NASA's interest in the science community?

So today I thought while we're continuing to update you on whatever questions you may have over developments that we're aware of or perhaps not aware of overnight, we thought it would be instructive to bring Dr. Ross and to give you an opportunity to hear an overview of the science that was accomplished on this very important stand-alone mission and to give you a sense to what our experience was with that and what it will likely mean as we move on with the International Space Station.

DR. ROSS: Thanks, General. I've been asked to give kind of a research perspective on 107 and there's three different categories of things I'd like to talk about. I'd like to fill you in on what the mission itself was about, that's the first thing; the second thing is the status of the research data, what we have, what we don't have, what we still don't know, and there's a lot in the last category; and the third item is what are the immediate next steps that we're doing from a research perspective.

So 107 was a flight that was dedicated to research. It's the kind of research on the mission fell into a handful of categories. There was combustion research, there was materials research, advance materials research, fundamental physics work, cell science, human physiology such as bone loss and finally fundamental biology. Those were the payloads that our office was responsible for. In addition, there were payloads from the European Space Agency, from commercial entities, and from students.

The status of the data. First thing we're doing is we don't have a complete picture because frankly we're allowing the research teams to grieve. These teams trained the crew, spent a lot of time with the crew over the past few years. They've really lost friends, friend and colleagues. Even under normal circumstances there's a tremendous bond between anybody who has conceived and built a payload and then the crew member who actually does and implements the experiments in space. And so we've allowed them, obviously, to follow whatever they need to do right now, and they're attending memorial services along with the rest of the NASA family.

At the same time, the research teams are aware of the desire for all of us, for everybody to know what they were able to obtain from the flight. Along with the orbiter data, the source data from the payloads is impounded, freezed by the Accident Investigation Team.

The data -- there was data obtained during flight by a communications downlink and whatever was previously copied is available to the research teams. They've been, as is standard practice, collecting and cataloging all that data and eventually they'll archive it again through standard procedures that are used on every single flight.

Normally the question you all want to know, what was learned from these experiments, and frankly that analysis usually takes place over the days, weeks, months and even years after the flight. But given the circumstances, they're trying to be responsive, their reports are still coming in to us, and I'll try to summarize right now what we know as of this moment. Unfortunately I can pretty much only speak in general terms, as it's too early to be definitive, but let me take you through the story.

Payload operations from this flight were very successful. Unusually successful. When -- there were very few glitches as far as actually the crew conducting the experiments. When there were problems, the crew fixed them, every single one of them; they stepped in and solved them.

So one of the first key things that we learned from this flight is that the performance of the technology, the hardware itself, the procedures we used with the crew to operate the experiments worked beautifully, they were an absolute success. And it confirms something we need to know whenever we're going to fly research in the future, both the hardware, the operations, that's critical. We take the information from every flight, go through a lessons learned and apply it to future flights. For example, what we'll be doing on the International Space Station, because the topical areas that we flew on this flight are all transferable to the International Space Station.

All right. Let me take you now through a few of the individual payloads. There are a lot of individual payloads. I'm only versed on some of them. Again, the European Space Agency ones -- and by the way, they've called in and asked us and they'd like to do whatever they can possibly do to help throughout this whole recovery process. But the European payloads and some of the student payloads I'm personally not sufficiently versed but I'll get back to you on those if you have specific questions.

Let me start with the combustion experiments. The combustion experiments on this flight had very good image data, got a lot of real-time analysis done from whatever was downlinked. Only a portion of their data was downlinked during the flight and they saw a few unique things.

One of the experiments saw truly the weakest flames that existed on and off Earth. If you think about a candle flame, for example, and the heat from a candle flame, these tiny balls of flame were literally one hundred times weaker from them. They were verifying theory that's decades old as far as whether these things could exist for a long period -- at all and whether they would exist for long periods of time.

According to Principal Investigator Paul Ronney at the University of Southern California, the data from this which these were burning hydrogen can be used to help model combustion chemistry for a variety of fuels that eventually has applications to automobile engines, and so that was one that we feel pretty good about as far as the return.

Second combustion experiment involves soot. Soot is a known health hazard. For people who don't know really what that means, when it's inside a flame, it's called soot; when it escapes, we think of it as smoke. Soot's a very known health hazard; it causes premature death of thousands of people in the United States each year. The precursor, as the combustion chemistry goes on precursors before soot is formed are known to be carcinogenic and soot itself can detract from engine performance.

There's also a whole positive side of the story where soot is actually used as part of an industrial product, but our ability to predict soot kinetics, how it forms, what its eventual fate is still really quite wanting and that was the reason we flew this experiment.

And, again, according to the Principal Investigator Jerry Faith of the University of Michigan, he saw the phenomena in these experiments that he has never seen before on Earth. He had previously flown in space, he never saw anything like what he saw in space. They were the best data that he could ever hope for from this.

Again, part of his data came down, part of it is still -- you know, it was on videotape, it was on digital data recorders. The fate of those we still don't know, whether we might have a chance actually to recover some of that.

Third -- third combustion experiment -- and I've only got a few more to go through -- third combustion experiment was a water mist experiment focused on fire suppression. It had a few start-up problems; things weren't behaving correctly. And, again, the crew stepped in. They not only fixed it but accelerated the operations and got done in a much shorter period of time than we had planned all of the tests, in terms of the number of tests that they had wanted to do. Again, they got very good data, qualitative data, on such things as how fast the flame was moving before it hits the suppression area and then how fast it moves crossing the suppression thing.

All right. Last couple experiments that I'll talk about in specific and then I'll get to some general topics. There was an experiment on soil behavior with applications according to the principal investigator about improving foundations for buildings, managing underdeveloped planned, handling powered materials in a variety of industries.

As I understand it, they were able to get about fifty percent on their expected data return so far, as was a fluids experiment, a fundamental physics experiment that looked at the viscosity of xenon near the critical point. Last thing before I turn to the life sciences, there was an experiment in bioreactor. We've flown bioreactors before; it's one of our most successful technologies that's transferred to use here on Earth. And they flew this time prostate cells and the tumors that they grew, grew at a much faster pace than anything they expected. They were able to see that through the downlink.

They may be able to get some data from that in terms of metabolic rates of these tumor aggregates, but, again, typically they need the sample to come down to Earth to get the complete story for them. That work, by the way, is used to help screen, for example, the effectiveness of drug therapies against a variety of illnesses.

The life sciences, that's human physiology and fundamental space biology. Unfortunately those experiments rely on specimens and samples and data to be returned and analyzed post-flight and so the loss in that area is quite substantial, probably in some cases complete.

As I said, there were other payloads on the mission that were sponsored by other agencies, other countries, and we're still trying to determine the status of those.

One last thing, the Israeli cameras, the Israeli payload that flew looked down on desert regions in the Mediterranean, looking at weather patterns, sand phenomena, again, in the desert regions.

They were able to collect the first calibrated images from space -- I'm reading this -- electrical phenomena in Earth's atmosphere known as sprites and elves. These are phenomena that were only recently noted by scientists who now have a much better understanding of how such things occurred. They also were able to capture smoke flumes and how it was affected from a fire on the ground and how it affected the cloud cover in the vicinity of that. So that's kind of what we know about the payload status.

Let me just very briefly cover next steps for us in the research community. There's really four next steps. The first one is what -- this is for our 107 research community, we're there to support them every way that we can. Again, we've got people helping them with grief counselors, we're working with them to help produce and collect their data and we'll go forward with them.

Second thing is we're supporting the 107 Accident Investigation Team. As I said, the data is fully impounded, including all the ground support equipment in case they need it as they go through their fault tree analysis.

Third thing is we are continuing our research on the International Space Station and on the ground and eventually back on the Shuttle. We are staying the course. In the immediate future, we will be relying on the progress vehicle for re-supply of research hardware up to the International Space Station.

And the fourth thing is that we are assessing impact to our entire research portfolio. That portfolio is what we do on the ground in laboratories at academic institutions and at NASA field centers. We are looking at the portfolio that we had planned for the Shuttle where we got the portfolio on both the near term and long term for the International Space Station, and we're seeing how all of the availability and all those -- what impact this tragedy has had on what we fly when.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to start on this side of the room and I'll move to the center, then I'll move to this side of the room, and then we'll go out to the centers. So bear with us. Please wait for the microphone and we'll get going.

NEWS MEDIA: Hello. Keith Cowling, sos.com. This mission arose originally out of a combination of concern from the research community and from Congress that there was a gap between the end of the SPACEHAB Program and the beginning of Station and it was jam packed with stuff that seemed to sort of bridge that gap.

With this loss, and I know it's only four or five days here and it's like on your feet thinking, how are you looking at possibly redoing some of the stuff on Station either as a whole or in part or are you even revisiting the chance of doing another free-flyer mission using SPACEHAB or something like that?

DR. ROSS: Okay. I'll take that one. The first thing is that we're looking at -- really we have to first understand what do we have from 107. I tried to give you a sense that it's an incomplete story right now.

The very first steps we're going to take and we have commitments from the NASA field centers is based on what we have gotten from Space, what we learned from the experiments, to see if there's any more we can do on the ground with those experiments, in drought towers, for example, and the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, or on the KC-135 aircraft from NASA Johnson down in Houston. So we're working with the investigators to get a sense of is there something more we can do to supplement based on what -- what we've learned so far.

As far as steps beyond that, as far as will we fly again on the Shuttle, will we transfer some of the -- of these experiments to the International Space Station. That's part of this impact assessment that we're going through.

It's always been our attempt to try to help investigators get data that they have lost during a mission. One of the things we normally try to do is look at the status of the hardware, whether the hardware itself is capable of re-flying and turning around quickly. Obviously that's not an option in this case, so we have to do a inventory of any back-up hardware that's on the ground, see how flight functional it could be, and then basically we've got to run down the usual list of getting something ready for flight and making decisions all along the way about scientific merits at the time we would be able to fly it and as well as just the cost hardware availability.

ROBERT MIRELSON: If we could, when I do call on you and identify yourself, if you want to direct your question to either Dr. Ross or General Kostelnik, just please say so.

NEWS MEDIA: Randy Schmidt from the AP. Ilan Ramon's father said, I think, this morning that NASA had told him there were between sixty and ninety seconds between the time the astronauts could tell something had gone wrong and the disintegration of the Shuttle. If that's the case, can you tell us how that's known and detail about what might have been happening at that time?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: No, I really can't. The engineering analysis if you follow what has been previously released by the program in terms of the actual timeframe, the flight was mostly nominal until a point that started with some sensor information that was acknowledged by the crew and then between that point and when we continued to have things progress along the left wing, that total sequence, which has been provided and I think everybody has that, only took about ten minutes. And what happened, you know, after that is totally unknown and those are the kind of things we are trying to decide.

So really all we know that the flight was absolutely nominal from the orbit burn, the initial part of the entry, until we got into the area somewhere over the skies of Calif., roughly, and when we get into this time sequence, when we start to see sensors anomaly fails, which are not necessarily temperature increases but losses of signal, you know, this is happening.

And, again, to my point before the engineering community is focusing their analysis on the left wing trying to find where the sensor paths are actually located physically in the wing to get a geographical map of where the sensor signs are, looking at where we do have thermal increases and we do ultimately get some actual thermal increases in the wheel well and the upper side of the fuselage on top of the glove box up there, and then trying -- through analysis trying to back up what kind of event, what kind of thermal event and where would that thermal event be located to generate that type of display. These analyses which are ongoing now will lead us to, I think, a starting point for those failures, and the same way as we see the aerovehicle performance coming in, actually the flight controls are pretty much nominal in the event during this same ten-minute period when we see these anomalies on the left wing, obviously something is happening because the flight controls are starting to react to counter what is beginning to be a left turn probably driven by this event and an increase in drag on the left side.

What happens at the termination of that data track when everything stops is an unknown totally at this time. Further analysis, you know, may provide that. I know we have talked about the extra 32 minutes (sic) we think of corrupted data is in the tapes. We thought that would be readily available.

When I talked to the chief engineer this morning and there are a lot of issues with the data. They're still working that. We expect that will be forthcoming and that could provide some more information on what happened to the vehicle in the next 32 seconds after the ten minutes where we see probably the catastrophic event.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Let me just insert there. I think you just did correct yourself. It is thirty-two seconds and not 32 minutes of data.

ROBERT MIRELSON: I think we all did catch that. Let's move over to the center. Michael, we'll start in the first row with Tracy.

NEWS MEDIA: Tracy Watson, USA Today, for General Kostelnik: There were reports this morning that some Shuttle engineers were very alarmed by the post-launch films of debris hitting the wing and thought that was a very grave problem and said that that was sugar-coated before reaching top management. Could you address that, please?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, I think Mr. Dittemore has addressed that, you know, directly and I think that would be a good conversation to have this afternoon with the Program.

I can tell you that having spent the last six or seven months in this Program and been around these people, people are pretty free with their opinions as to what they think, and this One NASA family is so concerned with this overall operation that I think it's fairly common knowledge within the community that trying to get to a Shuttle launch has been expressed as 20,000 people looking for a reason not to go. I mean, that is how concerned people are with the safety of this mission.

I am sure that when those photoanalysis were reviewed, there was concern, because certainly we watch these things every day of a mission in flight, everything from every sensor and every source is fed into this mission evaluation team. They are looking very carefully, they are conducting off-line analysis, they are talking with all of the best people, the brightest minds both in industry and government who are working for this program to make judgments as to what this event is.

I think the characterization that Mr. Dittemore has provided is spot on. And I was not involved with the engineers looking at these things. We have provided you precisely what those mission reports were.

I think you have watched Mr. Dittemore and in the various press conferences over the last few days. I'm not sure how you could doubt his sincerity or his professionalism in with dealing with engineering data. It is not possible that he would not take a credible recommendation from the trusted people in the Program office.

And the people below him have less interest in doing anything that wouldn't be perfectly safe. And the lower you get into the organization, the more people are concerned only with their particular part of this system.

So I am very comfortable that this team did as good as they could to understand what this anomaly was. And based on our experience with the debris, contact that we've had in the past and based on the information that we had from this 80-second point in the flight and the long-range videos we had, and the other analysis was conducted to the math models, I believe that we made the right decision at that time.

And it's yet to be determined, you know, perhaps there was a mistake there. We don't know that. We're looking at all the different opportunities that could have caused this. Remember that the incident was not an ascent problem, it was a descent problem, and we're focusing our activities trying to understand this anomaly perfectly and hopefully it will lead us to the clues.

Although one could guess and it might be obvious to somewhere the problem initiated, it's certainly not perfectly clear to us. So we're eliminating nothing in this search, but as I told you yesterday we're certainly -- we've compounded all the data, we're looking at all the various systems, we are taking a hard look at the external tank, we are taking a hard look with our material scientist at the foam. All of these things will be considered in due course.

NEWS MEDIA: Kathleen Coke with CNN. Can you tell us at this point what percentage, when it comes to debris, what percentage of the Columbia has been recovered? And of the debris that has fallen the farthest to the west, is that still tiles? And if so, has anyone checked the numbers on the tiles to tell exactly what part of the orbiter they came from?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, those would certainly be big clues. Let me address the first part up front. We are starting to get some of the material in. We have located many of the large parts. We talked about the nose and we've talked about the engines that are more towards Louisiana. We're starting to move those things as we speak, but rather than focusing on accountability and noting how much we have at this time, the real focus is trying to preserve the data in the field, get that to these collection sites, red tag the key items that could offer something to the heart of the investigation.

This is a list of items that the engineers have proffered to the people in the field. If you see these kinds of items, try to red tag those so we can document those for early analysis.

I would say the amount of material at the collection sites today as we speak is probably fairly small. Over the day, those products will increase I think very rapidly, perhaps even exponentially, and so we're in now the process where the recovery teams are in place, initial training is underway and we're starting now to move a lot of that material.

To your question specifically on the materials that are out west which are critically important to the engineers, we still have no information on what those items are. We only have e-mail pictures from the people who identified them, rough descriptions. We are thinking they could be parts of a wing and if so that would obviously be very critical to the investigation.

If there are tiles, certainly the numbers would give us some sense as to what those locals are. And so as I mentioned, we do have teams in place today in Calif. and in Ariz., and I would expect hopefully as soon as this afternoon we would have some insight as to what those parts are, so perhaps Mr. Dittemore in his afternoon's presentation can update you at that time.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Let me take Debra and then I'm going to come back to this side of the room, back to the middle, and then we'll go out to the centers.

NEWS MEDIA: I'm Debra Zaboranco, I work for Roiders. This is for Dr. Ross. I know this is hard to reduce this to a number, but just so we can tell our readers, while we're talking about percentages, what percentage of the science that you hope to gain are you going to be able to get? I understand it's different for life sciences than for others, but it'd be nice to get your assessment.

DR. ROSS: Sure. I mean, as -- I can tell by your question you understand how reluctant all scientists are to actually give you a quantitative number, so I'll take a shot at it, okay.

The life sciences, as I said, we don't expect to get much from that area. From the combustion sciences, we expect to have -- the numbers I got just before coming up here was 50 percent or greater based on what we know now. We don't expect to know less than we know now, so there's a chance to go beyond that.

The same with some of the other experiments that I talked about, the granular material soil experiment, you know, we're at this 50 percent number or greater right now. And all of these -- in all of these experiments some of the data gets downlinked, some of it gets stored on board. It's an optimization process and so it depends if we still hold out a little hope, perhaps we can recover some of the data that was recorded on board. We'll see.

NEWS MEDIA: Gwenyth Shaw with the Orlando Sentinel. Do you expect to find more pieces west of the areas where they were located yesterday in terms of over water? Are you searching in any way for things that might be at a greater distance?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Off the coast of Calif.? We have no data at this time. Most of the reports for the material that we're finding in Calif. and Ariz. came from actual on-site citizens who either found them, saw them, took pictures a time. It's really from that analysis.

Most of the information we showed you on the debris field yesterday, which we presented, was provided by actual radar coverage of the debris and the much smaller parts probably far up field were just not those that were recovered. So depending on what we find out there, we're learning more, you know, as we speak. We've gone on record now that there may be more material out there, there are people obviously thinking well, maybe I did see something or maybe there is something out here. And certainly those things that are credible we would encourage them to call into the site there at the Johnson Space Center and certainly we will work with them to investigate any of that material, because as we pointed out, early material separating from the Shuttle would be the most interesting in trying to understand the very earliest stages of this anomaly.

NEWS MEDIA: Hi, I'm Jeff Zellany from the Chicago Tribune. I'm wondering if you can tell me, how could the slab of debris have been foam if its dimensions were twenty inches by sixteen inches by six inches if the tank foam I believe is only one-inch thick?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Yeah, you really have to look at the particular foam that we're talking about that separated was a piece of shaved foam that's around the bipod assembly, so it's not the thin coating foam around the sides of the tank, it's actually thicker-shaped foam that's on this piece of attachment hardware that attaches the external tank to the Space Shuttle, it's called the bipod, and these are where we've had these two or three experiences with pieces of that particular foam coming off. And, again, it's just an estimate of what that is. There is no certainty as to what the size of that material was, but that's what it was.

NEWS MEDIA: Andrew Lawler from Science Magazine for Dr. Ross. I was wondering if you could be a little more specific about the impact assessment that's going on speaking about the long-term of research. Is there a group that's set up to look at the long-term impact on research? You know, who's a member of that group? Have the international partners on the Space Station been involved, particularly the Russians since they have the Progress vehicles, which could bring up additional scientific experiments.

DR. ROSS: Sure. I can speak only a little about that. We always worked both on the near term, the tactical level and then on the long term for the strategic manifest level. On the near term, we've got what we call an International Space Station Utilization Recovery Team. They're looking at the immediate research portfolio, what we had planned to fly, what it was available to fly, whether it will fit into the Progress, whether there is a limited shelf life to it, to the items up in orbit, and doing that assessment. We're focusing right now on that.

For the longer term, we'll follow all of the same procedures. When you start talking, for example, two years on out, we have standard procedures that we follow to manifest, virtually every one of our payloads. We're not changing those procedures. Internationals get involved in that, you know, whoever's talking that long term, just as they always do. We work with all the same research program working groups, because there's a whole array of different groups that want to fly on the International Space Station and those work their way up through their countries, their international agreements we live up to, et cetera.

So as I understand it, for the long term we're still going at the problem that way.

GEN. KOSTELNIK: I think science and space is an important topic, and although we're focused on Columbia and understanding this disaster, we will get over this and we will get back to flying, and then the debate will shift to the International Space Station and what it's about.

I think it's an important point, although we're still in the assembly stages of this process, probably only half complete as with the configuration that we understand today and no telling what it will be when it reaches full maturity, there is still a lot of science and research being done as we speak on orbit today and we should not forget that.

And even though we've been heavily into assembly and a lot of the focus has been on the large trusses and the bits and pieces, parts we've taken up, we have an active and ongoing science program on the International Space Station today. That is going to continue unabated.

I think you may have followed one of the key items of interest that we did have a little problem with was our microgravity glove box. That was -- we had a material part failure, we brought that down on one of the earlier flights. And the good news for the science community is the Progress that docked yesterday had the replacement parts. So we will be in the process over the next few days and weeks bringing the microgravity glove box back up and research that was planned and experiments that are already on orbit will continue. So if you look at the science is not going to be immeasurably impacted by this one loss. Certainly there will be losses.

We still have three high performing Shuttles in this fleet. We are going to find the cause of this accident. We are going to fix it and we're going to return that fleet back to its job of finishing the assembly of the International Space Station, and in close concert with Dr. Ross and his associates in the science community, we will continue to grow and improve the quality of science that's on board in space. And this is going to be a very value-added process to be sure the manifest will change.

The original schedules that we thought we were going to achieve this year are going to be delayed. The good news is we still have a fully operational Station on orbit. It will be healthy through the summer. We have a wide range of international partners with assets to help us in this time period as we work through these issues and bring the Shuttle operation, you know, back to, you know, full class.

So in a way of the science that can be done, I would focus not so much on this loss but the continuing opportunities that we will have not only this year but in the years ahead as we continue to mature this large science city on orbit.

NEWS MEDIA: Talesha Reynolds, ABC News. General Kostelnik, there have been reports that the Shuttle was on the launch pad for an unusually long amount of time and during that time there were heavy rains and cold weather, and I wanted to know if that would contribute to compromising a foam in any way and make it more vulnerable to ice.

GEN. KOSTELNIK: No, I don't really think so. In fact, it's not my recollection that it really was on abnormal time. We can perhaps pass this information to Mr. Dittemore and perhaps he can address that.

Certainly weather conditions do have an effect on things and particularly moisture and the temperature conditions are critical to forming ice. If you'll think back a couple days ago when Mr. Readdy was here, we were very concerned with ice formation on the tanks, because that provides a very critical source of foreign object damage and obviously it can grow to be very large and very substantial compared to the existing foam -- foam that we have.

So we take a lot -- a great deal of care in terms of watching, you know, how that works and are very careful when the environmental conditions are primed for the growth of ice.

On this particular launch, on that particular day, to the best of my recollection ice was not an issue. The weather conditions in whatever way they were, were not conducive to that and there were no contingencies or holds on flight due to that type of anomaly.

ROBERT MIRELSON: And let me just work my way down. We'll take a few more questions here from the front and then we'll move out to the folks in the media that are watching us from Johnson. So we'll just come right across, we'll catch everybody in the front here and then we'll go out to the centers. Go ahead, sir.

NEWS MEDIA: I'm John Anderson with the Huntsville Times. NASA has some promotional literature that came out the last couple of years noting that the manufacturer of the foam for the external tank has met EPA concerns about freon. Has that been considered as a source, you know, any change, I guess, would be possible, something to look at? Would that be a subject of investigation as to whether that process may have affected how the foam performed?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, certainly our material experts come from the Marshall Space Flight Center and as I mentioned yesterday they are on scene today at the Michoud facility as we speak, and certainly those are things we would consider. However, this change was made sometime ago and it was an issue over the use of freon in terms cleaning agents, in terms of bonding foam and they went to a water process, but we've successfully flown several, you know, missions and several external tanks without this problem, you know, with those new materials. But every time you change a process, you have those concerns and those issues.

That was not a recent change, it's been some amount of time with several flights successfully flown, but certainly all things like that will be second look. As well as they think, as good as we think our process are, one of the comments this morning from our technical team is at the same time we're looking at the way we do business today and the way we've done business in the past, we will go back and look at all possibilities to see are there things we can do better? Is there something in the process that we can improve?

So not only are we looking at the things we think are close to this accident and perhaps could be connected to the cause, we're re-looking and rethinking everything in this system.

NEWS MEDIA: Patty Reiner with the Houston Chronicle. And this is for the General. Could you comment on this 1990 report by Stanford in which they talked about just a small number of tiles near the landing gear, if those were damaged or lost that could create a catastrophic event. How seriously did NASA take that report and what did you do in response to it?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, I'm not really familiar personally with that particular report. There have been a wide variety of studies on the thermal protection system, on the tiles, on the reinforced carbon, carbon structure. I mean, there's been a lot of work done on this over the year. And trust me, every time one is sanctioned or offered, you know, NASA engineers take a look at what is proffered and play our own experience and our own analysis against those reports. That is probably one of many on this subject.

But as we have mentioned, with a lot of flight experience, we've really had good success with the tiles. The tile system is not only high performing in its thermal characteristics, it's very light, it gives us good upmass performance in the Shuttle, and over a large number of flights we've been very successful with that.

Now, as also Mr. Dittemore pointed out, though, the underside where we have some for high thermal heating is critical.

Any place you have openings, certainly like gear doors or other kinds of openings, those are key things that we look at and those would be a source of thermal issues if they were not properly sealed.

But again, through the flights that we've had, we've had very good luck with this thermal protection system and I think the system has been quite comfortable with it for a long period of time.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Let me just say I really appreciate everybody's patience and courtesy. What I'm going to do now is I think our phone lines are ready, we do have other media watching us from some of the centers. I'd like to go out to the Johnson Space Flight Center.

Just as an aside, especially for the new faces that are here today, at 4:30 Eastern Time, Ron Dittemore out at the Johnson Space Center will be conducting the second press conference today, will be live on NASA television, and those of you that are in the area that may not have access to it, this auditorium will be open if you want to watch it here.

NEWS MEDIA: Yes. This is Marsha Dunn from the Associated Press for General Kostelnik. Were any risk analysis studies of any sort taken into account during the Columbia flight regarding the potential severity of the debris hit? And was there any disinclination by NASA management not to rely on risk analysis given management's long time and well-documented aversion to this sort of thing in general because the risk findings might frighten the public?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: No, there really weren't those kind of discussions during the flight. I mean -- and, again, we've provided, you know, the full chronology of the Mission Evaluation Team reports, and if you read through those things carefully, you see on the second day that the strike anomaly is observed, and at that time yes, there were a lot of analysis conducted by the Mission Evaluation Team, and I would defer to Mr. Dittemore to give you more information on that because he is closer to the activity. And the engineers that actually conducted it are at the Johnson Space Flight Center.

But they looked at those things very carefully throughout the flight, every day of the flight and through all sources. They reviewed the video, they look at other activities, they conducted analysis, they went through deliberations. And what you see in the day-to-day reports is the culmination of those issues.

And on the twelfth day, you know, again, you get the professional judgments of the best people we have in this regard, and Mr. Dittemore has already pointed out he had no doubt to doubt that judgment, and I am of the same mind.

I am in the direct line of chain. Ron Dittemore works for me, this team works for him. I have been around these people, listened to them, watched them work, know their culture, know their concerns, and know their interests. It is not possible to me that they would have taken a risk that they didn't feel strongly about.

And the message that are in those daily reports, those are the source documents that we used here to make our judgment and we accepted that as being the truth at the time.

ROBERT MIRELSON: I'd also just like to add to that, that I don't believe we could agree with the statement that senior management is adverse to reviewing risk management out of fear of scaring the public. Our risk management assessment is an internal process where our response to the safety and crew safety and safety of the mission is paramount. The public's concern, of course, is very important, but we're concerned about our crews, our people that work for NASA, the people that are on the mission, and that's why we do a risk assessment.

NEWS MEDIA: Yes, Richard Pincheck from the New York Daily News for Mr. Kostelnik. The second of the worst-case scenarios mentioned in the in-flight analysis by Mission Evaluation Teams was that the piece of foam was 20 by 16 by six, weighed 2.67 pounds, the degree of impact might have been ten degrees, 13 degrees, or 16 degrees, and the piece of tile could have been as big as 32 by seven by two.

Now, I'm wondering if since the accident have you analyzed larger or shall I say worst-case scenarios and can you give us the perimeters of that? And have you gotten to the point where the size of the tile failure and maybe the piece of the foam and the degree of impact had gotten to a catastrophic event level?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: No. And on this subject, there is obviously a lot of analysis that is continuing. In fact, in talking to the chief engineer again this morning, they are going back and looking at all sources of information associated with ascent, as well as continuing to focus on the descent issue.

They are continuing to conduct analysis and reviewing the work that they did at the time. They will be -- there will be a continuing series of tests to understand more about the impact resistance of some of these materials. So those things will continue. In fact, over the time period as we lead through this analysis, there will be a wide variety of tests across the spectrum on things to help us understand what this issue is.

So I guess it would be speculative to say today exactly where those will be, but that work is ongoing and what we learn from that certainly will be made available.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Thank you. Thanks, Johnson. Kennedy Space Center, are you with us this morning?

NEWS MEDIA: Yes. This is Seth Bornstein from Night Reader Newspapers. First, General, you in your spirit of openness, will you please release the names of the -- the names of the participants in the meetings on the debris impact discussions in flight and the minutes of those?

Now, getting to my question. Many times we kept hearing Ron Dittemore talk about, you know, there couldn't -- you couldn't have done anything anyway as if it were a problem. There are many people who say that's part of the problem and it's an attitude of well, it's just too hard to fix and that seems anathema to Apollo 13 and NASA's past history.

How do you respond to the people who say that NASA has been paralyzed by wow, it was just too hard to do?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: No, I think if you focus on the movie and experience that you addressed, I don't think I've met anybody in NASA that would have that experience. There is nothing too hard to do in NASA that we would have tried had we thought that was necessary.

I can tell you certainly during that time period, that was not the case. The minutes that are relevant in terms of the output of that activity and how it was judged by management were those daily summaries that were not only provided up the management chain, but were shared with the crews real time. This is the story. I'll defer to Mr. Dittemore if he wants to release or present or have somebody explain who the members of that team were.

As he mentioned in his remarks and I would echo, we assume responsibility for this. This was a management decision. The engineers did the best job they could with the talents and the technology that we had to bear and we were very comfortable with their decision.

As to the minutes of those meetings, I don't know that minutes are actually taken. Certainly the Mission Evaluation Reports are the things that are provided as a matter of record, but if there are minutes from those meetings, they will be made available to the Accident Investigation Board, the independent board, and it will be in their judgment as to whether they release those things, because, you know, clearly we want an independent review of this. These are the lessons we learned from the Challenger experience and we are marching down this road to make sure that we have the right level, high level experience, independent view that will help us in an unbiased and open way determine what the cause was and help us with the fix so we can get back to flight.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Thank you. I believe we have one more question out at Kennedy, please.

NEWS MEDIA: Yes, this is Chris Kridler from Florida Today and floridatoday.com for Dr. Ross. At the beginning of this mission, there were some problems receiving and processing data from the SPACEHAB and I wondered if this reduced the amount of data that would have been downlinked from the Shuttle for the mission.

And if you can't quantify percentage, there were about 80 experiments. Can you say how many of those experiments actually downlinked any data during the meeting?

DR. ROSS: For the last part of that question, I'm actually still trying to get exactly that summary. How many people got any data at all and to what extent they got -- they got their data.

On the downlink issue, we use a video communication downlink that the shared resource for a number of experiments, so if we're downlinking the video from one experiment, we're not getting it from some of the others, and so with the other experiments if they have video requirements, those are stored on board.

The early comm. problems that you say were real, there were a number of in-flight maintenance procedures that eventually and software patches that eventually worked, but there was -- early on there were dropouts in the video downlink.

The principal experiment that was affected the most from that was the soot process experiment that I was talking about before. We were able to get some real firm data, but there was a good amount of the data, the video data and digital data was recorded on board. And so I can't give you a number. I can say that was the experiment that was probably most affected by the dropout.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Okay. Thank you. We have for the first time joining us since we have media added, Barksdale covering the recovery effort. I believe we have a question from Barksdale.

NEWS MEDIA: (Part of question inaudible) -- red tag debris you believe is most important? And secondarily, what components specifically have you not found that you believe are vital to the investigation?

ROBERT MIRELSON: We lost you on the first part of the question. If you can hear me, could you please repeat the entire question, please?

NEWS MEDIA: Sure. Can you be more specific as to what red tag debris you believe is most important, the red tag debris that has been found thus far? And secondarily, what components specifically have you not yet found that you're looking for that you would believe are critical to the investigation?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Yeah, I really would like to defer to Ron to answer that this afternoon. I have not seen personally the red tag list that's coming directly from the Shuttle Program and provided to the on-site Mission Mishap Investigation Team and so it would be speculative on my part to really identify what those are.

And -- well, if you're down in Barksdale, you may know more about the material that's there than I do. But I think we're in the very early stages of the recovery still and there's a lot of unknowns in that regard.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Okay. Thank you. We're going to go to the Marshall Space Flight Center. Good afternoon, Marshall. Do you have a question for us?

NEWS MEDIA: Good afternoon, yes, I do. This is Liz Hurley, WASF in Huntsville. I have two questions, one for Dr. Ross and one for the General.

General, could you expound a bit on the committee decision on the 12th day involving the mission where there was obvious dissension among the ranks? Can you tell us about how that dissension was accepted and why, an obvious unanimous decision to continue with the mission was made?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, I'm not -- I'm not sure that there was obvious dissension. I think what Mr. Dittemore has said when this was addressed a day or so ago that he didn't participate personally in the discussions and was not aware of the fact that there was any dissension. I think what he opined is that in those kind of -- in those kind of discussions with engineers, it would not be unlikely if there was a debate whether something was a problem or not, those things always happen. But I do not believe that the report that came forward had major dissenters associated with it.

Once it became a matter of record and was sent to senior management, we accepted that as the engineering truth. And you go back to that 12th day, internal to NASA we made a decision that this was not an issue, it was not a flight safety issue. It was clear that there was an anomaly on ascent where some type of foreign object damage was -- had occurred 80 seconds into flight. We postulated it probably did do some damage on the lower wing.

In the analysis from this team, we thought that damage would result in what was codified in those reports and that there could be some localized damage in small areas, but it would not be a safety of flight, and the overall impact experience was within family from the experience we've had throughout the Shuttle Program.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Okay. I believe you had a second question from Marshall, I believe you said for Dr. Brown -- or, excuse me, Dr. Ross?

NEWS MEDIA: Yes, this question is for Dr. Ross. Dr. Ross, you discussed the life sciences that were lost. To quote you, you said, "They are lost; they are substantial and complete loss." Can you go into specifically the life sciences that were lost and how far this set you back?

DR. ROSS: Okay. I personally am a physical scientist so I'm speaking somewhat second-hand. The life sciences experiments involved, for example, some plant-related experiments, some from commercial vendors looking at gene expression, for example, and seeing if they could come up with ways to increase the resistance to drought, for example, and damage in general.

There were two or three other kinds of experiments like that on board. They are not the most expensive payloads that we fly. We should be able to fly similar experiments again; they also don't take up a tremendous amount of room. So I'm sure we'll find a way to recover from that particular area.

There were also insects that flew associated with some of the student experiments and I can't talk too much about the status of those. There were some research using I believe 13 rodents and those were in support of the human physiology experiments, trying to get the -- at the causes of some of the problems that the astronauts see in flight, some of the bone loss problems, arterial -- the artery concerns that they could use the data from that.

Again, there will be other opportunities on the International Space Station. We are planning, in fact, to do very similar kind of research, in fact much more expansive kind of research in the coming years.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Thank you. We're going to go to the Glenn Research Center, then to Langley, then we'll come back and catch some of the folks that I missed on the first time around here.

We're running a little short on time, so we'll try to move it along. Glenn, please, good afternoon. Do you have a question for us?

NEWS MEDIA: Good afternoon. Paul (inaudible) WEWS TV in Cleveland. The question for Dr. Ross. In picking up on the life sciences since those did originate here in Cleveland, Dr. Ross, just how long did it take to set up those experiences here in Cleveland and just how difficult is for the workers here at NASA Glenn to deal with the loss, almost a complete loss, of those six life science experiments?

DR. ROSS: Okay. I need to be very clear since the question is about the work done at NASA Glenn in Cleveland, Ohio, that particular community of researchers was only involved in the physical science experiments, they had nothing to do with the life science experiments.

As far as I've been talking to the people back there in general, they feel just as all of us feel in the research community: Two immediate reactions, profound and deep sorrow at what happened, and shortly thereafter a profound and deep desire and obligation to help however we can to recover from this accident.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Thank you. Glenn, I believe you have one more question for us, please.

NEWS MEDIA: Yes, this is Tom Breckenridge from the Cleveland Plane Dealer for Dr. Ross. You said Jerry Faith saw some phenomenon he'd never seen before from the soot experiment. Can you talk a bit more about that?

DR. ROSS: Sure. I'll do my best to make it brief, because it's somewhat difficult to understand. He flew some work on STS-94 looking for -- at the same kinds of technical problems, and one of the great surprises in those, his hope was to create -- we've all seen candle flames or any kind of flame which has a closed tip. He had hoped to create similar flames in space with the tip closed, but brand new phenomena that we see in microgravity you don't see on Earth is the flame actually opens up and the soot issues out through the top. That was -- he thought he had conditions and we tried to find conditions, which would reclose the tip to get them exactly what, he wanted.

The other work was fascinating. He was able publish several papers from that. But his original goal was to get this sort of closed tip phenomena in space in the absence of buoyancy.

On this particular flight of 107, he was, in fact, able to get that for many, many of the test conditions. They had done a lot of work in the intervening years and he was able to see that and he was absolutely thrilled by the result.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Okay. Thank you, Glenn. We're going to take one question from Langley, then we'll come back over here to Frank Mooring.

NEWS MEDIA: Yes, we do. Good morning, or afternoon that is. This question is coming in from A. Jane Hotstettler from the Richmond Times Dispatch. Earlier there was a report yesterday from Sen. George Allen that the astronauts were concerned about the left wing and had taken or tried to take photos of the wing. This came out of a conversation the Sen. had with brother of David Brown who was told about this in e-mails from his brother, as the Sen. says.

The question is does NASA know of any such photos taken by the crew and did the Agency receive those photos? And what is being done to check the e-mails sent in by crew members to the families to determine if such photos were, in fact, taken?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, that's a good question. First the first point goes back to what we talked about from the question yesterday and I reinforced today that throughout the flight, the crew were made aware of the anomaly, so the crew knew there was potential impact damage about the same time the engineers did.

Nothing is kept, you know, from the crew, we're very open in this. I think you all know we're keeping the crew at the International Space Station completely in the loop of what's going on down here. I mean, this is part of the NASA culture, truly a One NASA approach to things.

So in this regard, throughout the flight all the crew members on 107 knew that the engineers were concerned and were looking at the potential impacts of what happened. In fact, they were provided the same analysis that we've shared with you and the same information. So this was not unknown to the crew.

So first on the area of e-mails, which by and large are private conversations between crew members and their families, we don't know what was said on those particular things. But if the Board, you know, can get them and the families are willing to make them available, surely, you know, some of those questions could be answered.

It would not be unrealistic to expect that the crews were relating that there was an issue, an anomaly on the flight and that the engineers were looking at it, and my assumption would be that the crew accepted it in the same way. In fact, all the communications are embargoed and they will be a matter of record and they will be provided, you know, to the external Board. But the sense was throughout the NASA community, this was not a safety issue, and I think the crew accepted that theme in the same way that we did.

As to the photos, and there's been a lot of dialogue on this, it's not possible from the cockpit to photo the wing, so that's -- there's no, you know, kind of basis, a fact that it can't be done. So whether they were shooting photos in space, certainly they were of a lot of things, but not trying to find a photo of wing damage.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Just in addition to that, I had spoken with those individuals from the Richmond Times Dispatch last night. The original query was about photos of the bottom of the wing, which is an absolute physical impossibility from the cockpit.

So we're trying to run these things down. We've also asked if there were e-mails, that family or friends or whatever wants to make available to the investigators. That's their privacy issue, that's not something we get in the middle of. So we hope that people that have input will use either the 800 lines or the toll-free line or the e-mail lines to contact the investigators.

Let me come down to Frank. We're running a little short on time. I know General Kostelnik has got another meeting. I'll take a few more questions. I've got a couple of announcements when we're done and we'll wrap it up.

NEWS MEDIA: Frank Mooring with Aviation Week. General, earlier you mentioned that the Station will be healthy I think you said through the summer. We've heard May, June, we've heard the calendar year. I wonder if you could discuss in some detail the considerations in keeping the Station operating without the Shuttle including issues in changing out the six and seven crews and human-tended operations without a crew.

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, we talked a little bit about that yesterday and I'll offer some more briefly on that. You know, clearly the crew that's on there was supposed to come back in March. They are well prepared and comfortable, as all good troopers are, to stay in whatever time is required.

The issues around support of the Station tend to revolve around life support issues and in that regard we are very healthy through June. And of course with the Progress that docked yesterday successfully in the unloading of supplies, certainly food and all the things we need are in good shape through June.

June becomes important because June is when the next Progress is scheduled, so it's a regularly part of the manifest and that will be a re-supply so that vehicle which is unmanned will continue to supply the other life support consumables.

The Progress vehicles also carry prop, fuel, which is used to re-boost the Station. Over the next calendar year, we are okay with our boosting plans; we have the support without the Shuttle with the Progress that are already manifested to maintain the orbit that's necessary for the International Space Station. So the Space Station is healthy in that regard.

As to the manning issue, obviously long term there will come a point when we would like to change the expedition crew out. There are a lot of options -- well, not a lot of options, but there are a couple options we have to do that. One, we can wait till the Shuttle comes back on line and if that is timely enough, the crew could stay up there and we could change out the expedition crew with the next Shuttle launch.

We have Soyuz vehicles from the international partners This is an International Space Station, after all, and we have partners who have equities and vested interests in this support. And as I mentioned earlier, we have a schedule Soyuz launch in April, which was going to be a taxi flight and to swap out and to update the crew return vehicle, the Soyuz that is on orbit as we speak, and that was always in the original plan.

So as a contingency, it would be possible, if we decided to do it, to perhaps work with the international partners and perhaps to do some type of expedition crew exchange through the Soyuz. That would require a change in the manifest that would require a change in training. These are the kind of contingencies the program office is thinking about now proactively, because there are some uncertainties as to when we will find and fix our problems with the Shuttle. So these are the kind of things that quality organizations are always doing. It's called strategic thinking.

We thought we knew where we were going. You know, we had a totally unexpected event. The world will go on and must go on and we owe this crew on orbit, you know, the care and feeding necessary to be healthy. And the enterprise is important not only for us but our international partners.

The Station is only half built. So the most important science-oriented pieces, the Columbus module, the Kibo module, are yet to come. And we intend to complete this and to achieve the potential that President Bush talked about at the Johnson Space Center yesterday.

So a lot of this is under work as we speak for the short term, for the near term. Through this summer everything is fine. The crew is healthy, motivated, and willing to stay to meet those needs. We have the supply and re-support Progress laid in and we have the crew return vehicle swap laid in.

And as you realize, we always have the lifeboat, we always have a crew return capability on the International Space Station. There is a Soyuz aircraft docked that is ready to depart on short notice.

The last of your question, if worst came to worst and we had to de-man the Station, would that be a viable option? It is not the preferred option, but if it became necessary, we can do that. We can fly the Station remotely, we can dock Progress vehicles remotely and re-boost remotely. So we have those long-term options, but we're hopeful and perhaps even confident that that will not be necessary.

ROBERT MIRELSON: Okay. Ricardo, last question and then I need to get General Kostelnik and Dr. Ross out. Go ahead, Ricardo, please.

NEWS MEDIA: Yeah, Ricardo Alonzo Salvador with the LA Times. For General Kostelnik: General, back to the foam and the impact on the orbiter for a second. Given the fact that there are some reservations but those reservations didn't reach the management team, do you see anything wrong with that? Is that a problem that should be addressed should the process be changed there?

GEN. KOSTELNIK: Well, again, it goes back to I'm not sure there are reservations. This was not the characterization during the time period when we were discussing. And knowing the way that NASA people are and how strongly they feel, hopefully that came across with the memorial ceremony that we had at Johnson. You know, we're having other memorial centers at the others.

It is just not conceivable that one of those individuals in that Mission Evaluation Team, if he or she felt strong enough that the answer that was being proffered was not right, I have no doubts personally that that person would have gone to Mr. Dittemore direct, and if Dittemore didn't accept that responsibility, he would have come to me or they would have come forward. And I believe when the Accident Board gets involved with these things and if there are matters of record internal to the organizational processes, if they exist they certainly will be reviewed by the team. When all of this is made clear, I think everyone will be comfortable with that process.

I mean, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, NASA is a great organization. We are getting -- we get unsolicited responses not only from the team. In fact, I was talking earlier with one of the reporters before we started. The NASA family is a unique family. It is contractor, it is government. There are wide varieties of names. But when you go around these NASA space flight centers, irrespective of the patch or the titles, there is one team out there oriented towards this mission. And irrespective of what those tasks are, whether those are secretaries, people driving trucks, turning wrenches, flying the vehicles, building them, there is one uniform dedication to this very tough challenge.

So I know there's a lot of conversations about these dissenting views. There is no organization that I'm aware of in government that would tolerate dissenting views oriented towards the safety of these crews. There is no organization in government I believe that exists like NASA is today. So I think more on this will be revealed as we move forward, but I would welcome you to re-engage with Mr. Dittemore in this afternoon's conversation on the same topic.

Just a couple of announcements again. Thanks very much for your patience. Just to reiterate, Thursday 10:00 o'clock at the Washington National Cathedral is the memorial service. I understand Vice President Cheney will be the principal guest, as well as members of Congress.

Today at 4:30 p.m. Eastern from Johnson Space Center will be Ron Dittemore and his crew for a press conference. There will be no morning press conference here Thursday morning because of the memorial service, but there will be a 4:30 p.m. press conference planned for the Johnson Space Center, that's Eastern Time, on Thursday.

Just an aside, I've been notified that remains of all of the astronauts are being returned to Dover, Del., today from Barksdale at approximately 2:45. Deputy Administrator Gregory and other NASA representatives from the Astronaut Corps and from the NASA family -- excuse me -- will be there for the acceptance.