Officials recover some of remains

By Michael Grunwald
The Washington Post

NASA officials announced today that they have recovered remains from some of the seven astronauts from the space shuttle Columbia, and America's leaders vowed to make sure their dreams of exploring the unknown and expanding human understanding would not die with them.

It was a day to recall the past, as the Columbia's fallen crew was mourned in the United States, Israel and India, in public ceremonies, Internet chats and an endless stream of televised reminiscences. Authorities said their remains will be taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies of the Challenger astronauts were taken 17 years ago.

But there was also a grim focus on the present, as NASA investigators reported new evidence of an unexpected heat increase on Columbia's left side minutes before its dramatic disintegration 39 miles above the Texas plains yesterday morning, and retired Adm. Harold Gehman Jr. was named to lead an independent investigation into the disaster. There were even bold visions for the future, as guests on Sunday talk shows pledged to beef up the U.S. space program and spoke confidently of future manned missions to Mars.

"I believe the will of the American people is that we explore space," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a former shuttle crew member who appeared on several programs. "I hope that can be translated into a vigorous program ... that will take us to Mars."

Last year, Nelson complained that shuttle safety upgrades were being delayed, and warned "we are starving the shuttle budget, greatly increasing the chances of catastrophic loss."

NASA's budget has been flat for the past decade, and Bush proposed nearly $800 million in cuts in manned flight programs last year. But today, an administration official said the president will propose tomorrow a $470 million increase in NASA's overall budget, and that the new investigation will address whether budget problems played a role in the tragedy.

On Tuesday, the president will speak at a memorial service for the Columbia crew in Houston.

"From the president's point of view, the mission of science and the marvels of space exploration will go on," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "He wants to make certain that no stone is unturned, to get to the bottom of this."

The nation today began to pick up the pieces from the tragedy — emotionally, but also literally. Hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officials, as well as military personnel, fanned out across a "debris belt" covering more than 200 square miles of east Texas, where they found chunks of metal, a flight helmet, a 4-foot-wide cylinder, and a mission patch with the names of all seven astronauts. But authorities warned that these early finds in more than 800 locations may represent the shuttle's "low-hanging fruit," and that the area's rugged forest terrain — known locally as the Big Thicket — could frustrate more elaborate recovery efforts.

At a late-afternoon briefing in Houston, NASA official Bob Cabana announced recovery teams have discovered remains from some of the seven astronauts. "It's still in the process of identification," he said.

Meanwhile, mission director Ron Dittemore said investigators are "gaining ground" as they try to solve the mystery of why the Columbia broke apart about 1,000 miles from the end of a 6-million-mile journey, shortly after re-entering the earth's atmosphere. He revealed an intricate web of new data from the Columbia's final minutes, including sensor recordings of excess heat in the left wheel well and excess drag on the left side. Dittemore said investigators will study whether the problems were caused by a chunk of foam that may have damaged tiles on the left wing during liftoff, but he cautioned that it is much too early to speculate on the cause.

"I've got to be careful not to jump to conclusions," Dittemore said.

Early speculation after the destruction of the Challenger in 1986 focused on possible engine problems, and that turned out to be wrong. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe today assigned several internal units to investigate the loss of the Columbia, including a "Mishap Response Team" and a "Contingency Action Team." He also announced the formation of an independent board led by Gehman, who co-chaired the probe of the October 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

O'Keefe appeared on several TV shows today to pledge NASA's commitment to find the problem and fix it. He promised there would be no rush to judgment, although he repeated his assertion from yesterday that NASA has seen no evidence to suggest terrorism. "We are doing everything we possibly can to find out what caused this accident, for the families of the crew of this courageous group of people who were aboard Columbia," O'Keefe said on NBC's Meet the Press. "We owe them that."

Those astronauts were honored today around the world, from Rome, where Pope John Paul II promised to remember them in his prayers, to Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Ilan Ramon a national hero, to Karnal, India, where a Hindu shrine was set up at Kalpana Chawla's high school, to the First United Methodist Church of Titusville, Fla., where the Rev. David Waller described the plume of smoke that trailed the doomed shuttle as "a glistening tear across the face of the heavens."

At the same time, the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla movement crowed that the demolition of the shuttle showed that the United States was not omnipotent. What happened "is a message to all humanity, and especially Arab, Muslim and Third World people, a message to those who thought in the past few years that America was a god that couldn't be defeated or defied," Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told thousands of people at a graduation ceremony.

The loss of Columbia will surely increase scrutiny of NASA, but Bush's promise to the nation yesterday that "our journey into space will go on" was echoed by other politicians — including Nelson, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and the chairmen of the congressional subcommittees overseeing NASA, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. — as well as former astronauts, including John Glenn, Sally Ride and Buzz Aldrin. None of them suggested that NASA has ever skimped on safety, and all of them stressed that manned space flight is a crucial element of the nation's destiny.

"Safety has always been job one at NASA," Brownback said on ABC's "This Week." "I think the totality of their record bears that out, that they have conducted a very safe program. ... We have to move forward with this. We need to sow that vision for our people and for the people around the world, so that these lives not be lost in vain."

Frist paid homage to micro-gravity experiments conducted on shuttle missions.

"These heroes were scientists," Frist said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "There is no question in my mind that the world is a better place whether it's CAT scans, MRIs medicines, pharmaceutical agents, the tennis shoes we wear. The world is a better place because of manned exploration."

Several politicians and former astronauts called for exploration of new frontiers, with some echoing the first president Bush's 1989 challenge to put a man on Mars. Aldrin, the second man to step on the moon, said today: "I certainly see that in the next century, people will be on Mars."