Space shuttle accident investigations

Date:Challenger accident took place January 28, 1986; Columbia accident took place February 1, 2003

The Event: After the accidents that destroyed the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles, investigators began the difficult tasks of finding and identifying evidence that would allow scientists to understand what had happened and allow the families of the dead crew members to bury their loved ones.

Significance: High-profile, widely publicized, multiple-casualty disasters create particular complexities in the search, collection, and identification portions of the investigation process. The investigations of the Challenger and Columbia tragedies required the use of many forensic tools.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began the space shuttle program with Columbia, which launched for the first time in April, 1981. Challenger was the next shuttle to be launched, after Columbia had completed five missions. Challenger made its maiden flight in April, 1983.

On January 28, 1986, seventy-three seconds after it lifted off for its tenth mission, the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated. Investigators would later determine that the disaster was caused by the failure of an O-ring seal in the craft’s right solid rocket booster. This failure caused a flame leak that engulfed the fuel tank and resulted in structural breakdown. With the structure compromised, aerodynamic forces broke the shuttle apart.

On January 16, 2003, as it was lifting off for its twenty-eighth mission, the space shuttle Columbia sustained damage when a piece of foam insulation broke off the main propellant tank and struck the shuttle’s left wing, damaging the thermal protection system. The crew continued and completed their mission, but the damage was enough to compromise the wing’s structure, and the shuttle began to fall apart during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on February 1. Eyewitnesses on the ground reported seeing debris break off the shuttle prior to its disintegration above Texas and Louisiana.

Government-appointed review boards were commissioned to look into the two shuttle disasters, and both found that the accidents were caused by malfunctions of which NASA officials were already aware. Both boards cited NASA administrators’ insensitivity to the true potential risks posed by these documented issues as the main contribution to the tragedies.

Forensically speaking, every investigative scene analysis is intended to answer the same basic questions: How does the scene fit into what really happened, and what evidence within the scene supports the conclusions about what happened? Forensic scene searches are concerned with the identification, collection, and preservation of evidence. Scenes of the magnitude of the two shuttle destructions are no different from smaller scenes; they are simply amplified. When everything from the number of people involved to the amount of evidence available is on a grand scale, it becomes essential for investigators to establish a system to keep track of every detail.

Jurisdiction

The first thing that must be established in any type of law-enforcement investigation is which agency has the proper jurisdiction to investigate the case—that is, which agency is going to take charge of the investigation based on its legal authority over the crime or event, the geographic area, or the laws of the area. Sometimes jurisdictions can overlap, such as when both state and federal agencies have interests in particular cases. In these cases, agencies can share authority; this known as concurrent jurisdiction. It is always better, however, for one agency to take the lead in an investigation so that the work is not hampered by any competing goals and agendas the different agencies may have.

The investigators of both the space shuttle accidents had to contend immediately with jurisdictional issues. The agencies and other entities involved in the Challenger investigation included NASA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a specially appointed presidential commission chaired by former U.S. secretary of state William P. Rogers (known as the Rogers Commission), and the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard. The Columbia investigation included personnel from NASA, the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Air Force, the Office of the Armed Forces medical examiner (OAFME), many Texas and Louisiana state and local agencies, and, later, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The Columbia incident was also reviewed by a presidential commission known as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

NASA took the lead in the Challenger investigation, confiscating tapes and pictures of the incident and making decisions to release little information to the news media. The FBI conducted an investigation to determine whether sabotage was involved, but eventually the Rogers Commission took jurisdiction to direct the investigation. In the Columbia incident, the FBI initially guided the search for shuttle parts and human remains on the ground, but NASA and the OAFME soon became the two main agencies involved. All recovered parts of the shuttle were sent to NASA for technical analysis, and the astronauts’ remains and uniforms were sent to the OAFME for identification and examination.

Searching the Scenes

When Challenger broke apart, it was about 10 miles above the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 18 miles offshore. Pieces of the shuttle continued to fall for an hour, making it dangerous for search crews to enter the area immediately. Challenger’s nose section, with the crew cabin inside, was blown free from the rest of craft. NASA later learned from flight-deck intercom recordings and the apparent use of some emergency oxygen packs that at least three of the astronauts were alive during Challenger’s fall. The nose section shattered upon hitting the ocean at what is estimated to be about 200 miles per hour. The wreckage scene covered approximately 93,000 square miles of ocean that included depths of up to 1,200 feet.

An hour after the incident, search-and-recovery planes and ships began the search for survivors and wreckage. Although some pieces of the shuttle floated on the surface of the ocean, most of the debris had sunk to the bottom. The bodies of the crew were not found right away, despite a search effort that included twenty-two ships, six submersibles, and thirty-three aircraft. Over the next few months, pieces amounting to about 50 percent of the shuttle were recovered, including parts of the external tank, both solid rocket boosters, and the orbiter. About 45 percent of the orbiter itself was found, including all three main engines, which were recovered intact, leading investigators to believe the engines were not involved in the incident.

On March 8, 1986, thirty-nine days after the search began, search teams found the crew cabin, which had not been destroyed. The bodies of all seven crew members were found inside, still strapped into their seats. The bodies were transported to the OAFME mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for autopsy.

On the morning of February 1, 2003, NASA officials lost contact with the crew of the space shuttle Columbia about fifteen minutes prior to its scheduled landing. Video evidence depicts the shuttle breaking apart over Texas, approximately 39 miles above the ground. It has been estimated that the shuttle was traveling at approximately 12,500 miles per hour. The debris covered a rectangular area nearly 60 miles wide by 250 miles long over East Texas and Louisiana, in terrain that ranged from arid ground to bogs.

In contrast with the Challenger scene, which, as it was in the ocean, was relatively isolated from the public, the Columbia scene was accessible to anyone within the vicinity. Control of the scene became an immediate concern for investigators, and they found such control nearly impossible to achieve. Within the first few hours after the accident, materials alleged to be parts of the shuttle were being offered for sale on the auction Web siteeBay. Authorities quickly shut down the auctions, and the posters were charged with tampering with an investigative scene and evidence.

The Columbia scene was so large that no single investigative agency could handle the search independently. All local law-enforcement agencies were contacted and asked to help within their areas of responsibility. If searchers came across anything they thought could possibly be related to the Columbia or its crew, they were told to collect it, note the appropriate location and time, and send it to NASA officials. NASA held all the recovered mechanical debris at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and all organic materials found were sent to the OAFME mortuary at Dover Air Force Base for identification.

Autopsies and Victim Identification

A question often arises concerning autopsies conducted on persons who died as the result of a known disaster: What can such autopsies prove beyond what is already known? In both of the space shuttle tragedies, the deaths of all fourteen crew members were obviously the result of the shuttles’ disintegration. Forensic pathology, however, can shed light on other important aspects of cases in addition to cause and manner of death, including incident analysis and victim identification. Remains may be identified through the analysis of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), fingerprints, or dental records. It is important to identify remains positively for the sakes of the families of the deceased.

In the case of Challenger, all seven crew members were found in their uniforms and strapped into their seats, so presumptive identification was easily accomplished. The news media and the crew members’ families, however, also wanted to know when the crew died and whether they had suffered before their deaths. The autopsy findings in this case were inconclusive, largely because the remains had been submerged in the ocean for more than a month, and severe decomposition had set in. NASA officials found evidence that some of the crew may have survived the initial breakup of the craft, but then the crew cabin fell more than 50,000 feet and hit the water at approximately 200 miles per hour—no one could have survived such an impact.

Victim identification was an extremely important element of the investigation of the Columbia incident. The remains of the Columbia crew were found in parts, scattered with the shuttle debris over a very large search area. Identification of every body part was essential, so that the family of each crew member could be presented with as complete a body as possible for burial.

Findings

The Rogers Commission concluded that the space shuttle Challenger did not explode; rather, it was torn apart by aerodynamic stress after the structural failure of an external tank. The condition of the shuttle’s three main engines showed no signs that they contributed in any way to the incident. An assessment of the external tank debris suggested that the tank itself was not responsible for the accident; rather, the failure of an O-ring used to seal joints in the solid rocket booster compromised the structure.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that a puncture in the leading edge of the shuttle’s left wing was caused by a piece of insulation foam that peeled off the external tank at launch. The hot gases formed during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere expanded inside the wing, causing the shuttle to break apart on its final approach.

Bibliography

Cabbage, Michael, and William Harwood. Comm Check…: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia. New York: Free Press, 2004. Offers a good summary of the ethics of Columbia’s mission and the debate among engineers on the ground concerning whether it was safe for the shuttle to return. Notes that opportunities to learn the extent of the spacecraft’s problems were missed and that repeated warning signs were ignored.

Feynman, Richard P. “Richard P. Feynman’s Minority Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry.” In The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman, edited by Jeffrey Robbins. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 1999. One presidential commission member—a Nobel laureate in physics and widely renowned scientist and teacher—presents his explanation of what caused the Challenger accident.

Kubey, Robert W., and Thea Peluso. “Emotional Response as a Cause of Interpersonal News Diffusion: The Case of the Space Shuttle Tragedy.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 34, no. 1 (1990): 69-76. Good post-Challenger look at how NASA dealt with the media and the visual depictions of the Challenger incident. Discusses how these factors may have affected the investigation.

Langewiesche, William. “Columbia’s Last Flight.” The Atlantic Monthly, November, 2003, 58-87. Excellent overview of the investigation that followed the Columbia tragedy, with good explanations of the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

Lighthall, F. F. “Launching the Space Shuttle Challenger: Disciplinary Deficiencies in the Analysis of Engineering Data.” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 38 (February, 1991): 63-74. Analyzes the field data acquired before the launch and compares them with the results of the investigation. Somewhat technical, but very informative.

McDanels, S. J. “Space Shuttle Columbia Post-accident Analysis and Investigation.” Strain: An International Journal for Experimental Mechanics 42 (August, 2006): 159-163. Presents a thourough, technical review of the Columbia incident and investigation.

Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. Springfield, Va.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1986. Provides a comprehensive view of what caused the Challenger accident and the tragedy’s repercussions.

Vaughan, Diane. “Autonomy, Interdependence, and Social Control: NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger.” Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (June, 1990): 225-257. Provides informative discussion of NASA’s failure to identify legitimate risks, which resulted in the Challenger tragedy.