Shuttle panel opens inquiry

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 6

Shuttle panel opens inquiry

NZPA-ReuterCape Canaveral

The investigation of the space shuttle Challenger explosion shifted to Washington yesterday for the first public meeting of a Presidential commission appointed to find the cause of the disaster.

The meeting will be the first public look at the investigation, which has been conducted largely in secrecy since the spaceship Challenger exploded killing seven astronauts. The space agency’s sixmember board of inquiry, how under the control of the President’s panel, was to present a report on its week-long investigation to

a group headed by a former Secretary of State, William Rogers, and a former astronaut, Neil Armstrong. The commission was charged with finding the cause and recommending a solution in 120 days. The space agency and its shuttle contractors are expected to come under fire from many different quarters.

A committee of aerospace experts has been warning the National Aeronautics and Sapce Administration for at least three years that it might be sacrificing safety features of its shuttle fleet through its fast-paced programme of design modifications.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Board, a panel created by Congress, expressed concern that the space agency’s recent moves to trim the weight of the shuttle’s external tank and booster rockets could have been preceded by better technical analysis.

Beginning in 1983 the space agency reduced by 1816 kg the thickness of the metal casings on the shuttle’s booster rockets, a component that emerged as the prime suspect in Challenger’s explosion over the Atlantic. A committee member, John Stewart, said, “N.A.S.A. has been quite slow at times in responding to our recommenda-

tions for safety improvements.”

The panel’s 1984 report concluded, “It appears that much needs to be done before the space transportation system can achieve the reliability necessary for safe, highrate, low cost operations.” The space agency sent a second ship yesterday to an area 48km from Challenger’s launching pad to search for an object that could be the shuttle’s suspect right rocket booster. There have been strong sonar “hits” in that area, indicating that the booster may be there in 335 metres of water.

The Independence, a booster recovery ship,

was steaming in that direction to join another such ship, the Liberty Star.

The Independence carried a robot submarine capable of photographing the object but N.A.S.A. said plans for its use were undetermined because of a choppy sea. Sources reported that ships had recovered five metres of explosives from a “destruct package” that was on the side of Challenger’s main fuel tank when it lifted off.

The explosives had not been detonated, the sources said, removing them from the list of possible causes of the catastrophe.