Transcript

NEWS BRIEFING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
FEBRUARY 7, 2003

Michael Kostelnik
NASA Deputy Associate Administrator
International Space Station and Space Shuttle Program

Today's another day thinking about the fallen heroes. Today the NASA administrator, Sean O'Keefe, and the associate administrator for human space flight, Bill Readdy, is down at the Kennedy Space Center at the landing facility--at the landing strip where this crew would have returned from space. And as I mentioned before, there will be several other memorials throughout the NASA centers honoring these great national heroes.

Today I'd like to talk about a couple things. I'd like to bring you up to speed on some developments that have been happening overnight. There's not a lot to report, but there are some things to bring to your attention.

As Mr. Dittemore talked yesterday, we are about to move into a new phase, into a time of transition, where the initial response to the accident is beginning to close and the more formal investigation is about to commence. And I will cover a little bit about that.

I'd also like to bring you up to date on some of the activity that's happening in the recovery area so you have a good sense for how things are going in that regard. And then I'll be receptive to your questions on things that may be important in terms of responding to the facts as we know them.

First of all, the administrator and his team of senior leaders will be leaving Kennedy this morning, going to the Johnson Space Center. The administrator will be addressing, at an all-hands call, the NASA work force there at the Johnson Space Center.

And then he'll be in discussions with Admiral Gehman in his membership of the Columbia accident investigation board, this independent body that will be assuming, in this transition, complete responsibility not only for the recovery that is still continuing, but the beginnings of that analysis and ultimately the development of the termination of cause and the proposals of the final report.

That activity takes place today at the Johnson, and I suspect that over the weekend you will start to see gradually a change in roles and responsibilities.

In that regard, I would just like to refresh your memory of some of the activities of the teams that have been working so it's fairly clear how the structure is likely to play out.

As you know, the Gehman board requested and appointed an in the contingency plan is an independent body that will actually be the group that's going to determine the conclusions. We have been trying as best we can in a very forthcoming way to provide you the facts--the basic facts of the information as we know them. And to be sure, given those facts, many people are offering hypotheses, opinions and subjective guesses as to what the cause and where things lead. And I suppose that is fair in an open society, and those will probably continue.

On the NASA side, we're primarily concerned with recovering and stabilizing the material, preserving the data for the independent board to review, and then assisting them from their direction in conducting whatever analysis is required ultimately to determine the cause. So increasingly, that will be the role of NASA downstream.

To bring you up to the operations and how things are going out in Texas, I would like to just, kind of, give you some numbers. I think you all know, as I've mentioned earlier, FEMA is overall responsible for coordination in that area. There's been a tremendous response from people wanting to help at the federal, state and local level, and I just want to give you some sense of the team that's out there.

More than 1,200 people: about 220 or so NASA individuals of all kinds, about 800 National Guardsmen in both Texas and Louisiana, almost 400 state troopers from both states.

KOSTELNIK: We have dive teams involved because, I think, you know, if you've seen some of the media presentations of the board walking around, much of the debris is in heavily wooded areas, much of the debris is in and around bodies of water. So there are dive teams that are doing investigation underwater.

And, of course, in a type of this--this is out open in a lot of country. It's very difficult to get around and find a lot of the material. We have dog teams out working as has been previously mentioned; 25 horse-mounted representative of local officials out in the same area and even 36 game wardens involved.

A tremendous opportunity and tremendous activity on the ground, similar so in the air with aircraft of all types and all types of capabilities from across federal, state and local agencies conducting support of the on-site FEMA and NASA directors.

I would bring your attention that one of the unique capabilities brought to bear is the use of side-looking radar. It's very good at penetrating foliage areas. So we have aircraft that are continuing to do passes in the vicinities of the debris field trying to locate larger structures that are perhaps embedded in the forest.

We've had a good deal of material recovered. I know there's always questions about how much. It's very difficult to provide that statistic.

Again, our collection sites are Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Carswell in Ft. Worth. Those are the initial areas where material is brought from the field and set up for removal. The material will be removed ultimately to Barksdale. And then from Barksdale to ultimately to the Kennedy Space Center, where in the typical way the material will be under the control and under direction of the Gehman board. And they will determine how much will be reassembled, how much will be laid out to help facilitate the understanding of how the mishap happened.

It's been a dramatic effort. And it probably hasn't gone as fast as perhaps some people would have hoped. But you have to remember, this is more than just picking up material. Going back to what I said early on, our original focus was, first of all, a concern for public safety. And all of the agencies have done a great job doing that.

There have been numerous people that have reported to hospitals for various symptoms, but to date none have been admitted. So I think as we sit today, there really haven't been any serious evidence of impact to the local community. And that is a good news story. And of course, those concerns will continue. And we'll continue to keep an eye on public safety.

Second, we focus very aggressively in the early days for the recovery of human remains. And that has progressed very well, and some of that work will continue.

And finally, it's preserving and then transitioning the debris material back to a place where the accident board can then deal with it. This is more than just picking things up.

Initially, in the area of public safety where there was hazard to the local community, certainly some of the pieces that were around the schools were moved to safer locations. And those that were blocking thoroughfares were ultimately moved in an expeditious fashion.

Now, it's a more measured approach because we need to document where these materials came from. And as you can imagine, these 1,200 people throughout this area working all these activity, would be easy to lose some very important information to an accident investigation if we weren't clear where a piece of structure happened to come from.

So we're doing a lot more than just picking things up. These things are being bagged. They're being annotated so we keep a good track record.

And as I mentioned yesterday, there are certain pieces that are of higher interest than others. These are trying to be identified both with the people in the mission response team that are working these issues, but also the people in the fields so we can get ready access to those things.

So although it was fairly slow initially and yesterday was not as productive as it might have been, it was a weather day in Texas. I think you know many of the aircraft resources were grounded. A lot of the ground activity was limited by the amount of rain and so forth. Today the weather is better.

The processes are in place. The trucks are starting to flow, assemblies have been transferred from our collection sites in Lufkin to Barksdale. And over the next few weeks, under control increasingly of Admiral Gehman's board, you'll find the bulk of this material and the bulk of the cleanup contained.

Again, the field--the NASA field activity responsible for this is the Mishap Investigation Team. That is the team that has been on-site since day-one in the Barksdale-Lufkin-Ft. Worth area. That team works for the NASA Mishap Response Team, that is headquartered in the Johnson Space Center. And the Mishap Response Team has all the analysis, all the other investigation tools that NASA can bring to bear. And these will be the two entities that will be responding solely to the independent board as we make this operational transition in the very near future.

This is the normal way that accident boards are accomplished. There is always initial on-site response to preserve public safety to take care of human remains if that is part of the accident, and then to secure the debris field. This is the normal way that the NTSB, the Department of Defense, that all regulatory bodies begin their investigations of on-site disasters.

And at some point, there is always a transition, and depending on the significance of the problem that is a different kind of time. It's not necessarily set in concrete, but at some point the initial response team will transition to a more orderly analysis and investigative body that is associated with determining the cause.

KOSTELNIK: I've been associated with two similar--not similar, but two accident investigations in my past, and these are very consistent processes with the way that the DOD, for example, would investigate a large aircraft accident.

So what I will offer to you is progress was initially slow. I would not be overly critical, because I think the team out there on the ground has done a great job. This is a task without precedent in recent time. And again, I would tout the coordination between the federal agencies, the state agencies and the local agencies, that they've continued to do an incredible job, and it's my expectation that over the next few weeks you will see a rapid improvement in that area.

Finally, I would like to update you on a couple developments. I know there have been some questions about the materials out west. I know this is a continuing source of question. Let me update you on the facts of that as we understand them now, because we did send--and I told you earlier that we thought there were some credible opportunities for material on the ground in California, Arizona and other western states, to the extent that we would send and did send NASA teams out to take a look.

To date, these teams are continuing to look for material. They have recovered some things, but they're not in a position to determine whether these are pieces of debris actually from the Columbia.

So that analysis is continuing, and as of today there are still no confirmed or confirmation that we have debris any further west than Fort Worth.

We do feel, from other sources and the material that we are finding in northwest, there would be material west of Fort Worth. So we're going back to the NTSB and trying to get additional radar data. And recall, those were the plots that I gave you earlier that showed and highlighted the debris field between Fort Worth and the Louisiana border. We're now trying to get similar data to see if there is more material to the west within a 150-mile range west of Fort Worth.

And, of course, the interest and concern with the material that's out very far west, in California, is still of vital interest. So if there is information in the public sector or in the media that can help us locate what they feel to believe are valid debris from the orbiter, that information would be critically useful to the accident investigation, and I would encourage people to have that kind of information to continue to come forth.

There has been a significant recovery, and this was in the Fort Worth area, and it is a piece of the leading wing--leading edge of the reinforced carbon-carbon composite. This is this black reinforced material on the highest temperature leading edges of the nose and the wing. We do have a large piece of one of the wings. It is not clear which wing this is, but obviously, given the anomalies that we have on the descent coming through the left wing, obviously this structure is very important. This has been contained and will be transferred to the Fort Worth site.

So with that, I think that gives you a good sense for where things are. In our view, the field work has gone exceptionally well, and I hope you agree, given the challenge. We are starting now to do a good job on recovery, bagging, tagging, identifying the material.

Over the course of the next few weeks, under the auspices, again, of the independent board, you'll see more and more of the material en route to the Kennedy Space Center, and we will make a facility there where the board will have at its disposal an opportunity, a large facility, to reconstruct, in whatever way seems prudent, the pieces that are remained to help us understand the tragedy.

QUESTION: Can you confirm that NASA's reviewing Air Force photos or film that show damage to the leading edge of the left wing and describe that damage?

KOSTELNIK: I can confirm that we are looking at a lot of video. As I talked the other day, not only video, but imagery in multiple spectrums.

We have a lot of capability in this country in our national means, and there was a lot of attention directed because the flight of shuttle is always of an interest to our national public.

KOSTELNIK: There was a lot of government and a lot of professional and a lot of amateur focus on the terminal flight path of this vehicle. All of that data is coming in now and being processed and being analyzed and being correlated with the other things that we find.

So, yes, there is a lot of material coming in. There are Air Force photos and there is Air Force imagery that is on its way, and some is already in place that is being analyzed by the program.

It would be speculative to judge what those photos show. That was really, kind of, up to the accident board to make that assessment. The images, some are fairly clear, some are not so clear, but these are all being analyzed as we speak.

QUESTION: A little more on these images and how they might line up with this leading edge carbon-carbon that you say you found in Fort Worth. The Air Force imagery, was it taken--it seemed to have been taken some place just west of Fort Worth, the one that gentleman beforehand was referring to. Can you tell us where it was taken from? And can you give us some kind of description of what to the layman's eye of understanding that you've not yet done a full analysis of it? It appears to show--and could you describe for us a little bit about the condition of this carbon-carbon leading edge and whether it included tiles as well that you found in the Fort Worth and also where you found that?

KOSTELNIK: It's in the Fort Worth area. Without being overly specific, I really don't have that detail. It's probably not that critical. It is a large piece and does include some tile material, as well. I can confirm that. And that is as about as much as I know. That was just found over the found over the last night. It's a fairly large piece.

KOSTELNIK: It would be speculative for me to add, but it's a significant part of the leading edge; certainly enough to do some analysis on.

The other part, of the source of the imagery, it was from a government activity. It was out in the west. And it was within the time period when the anomalies in the left wing are occurring. So I can confirm that much for you.

QUESTION: Can you tell us a little more specifically where it was found and whether the photo was from the ground up, or whether it was a satellite down?

KOSTELNIK: No, it was a ground--this particular one I think you're referring to is a ground-base optical capability.

QUESTION: I understand that a team at Johnson looking at utilization recovery has reported to Mr. Grussenmeyer (ph) and perhaps to you about what some of the options are to keep the science going. Could you talk about that? And are there any specific ways in which the Russians have offered to help?

KOSTELNIK: Well, as Mr. O'Keefe pointed out, we had very high-level representation from all of the international partners at the ceremony yesterday downtown. And that was very gratifying. And it shows you how big this international partner team is. They're obviously very concerned with this incident and obviously very supportive.

I think he also indicated that we invited them over and had an opportunity to bring them up to speed on the accident investigation, the facts of it as we know them at this time. And we are in the process, as we speak, of beginning discussions with the international partners to see what are going to be the requirements and what we really need to do.

And as I mentioned, for the very near term, the crew is healthy and doing fine. Re-boosting is not an issue. We have with the Progress this dock, and the Soyuz vehicle this dock. We're in good shape in that regard.

KOSTELNIK: We had a planned Soyuz launch in April. We're taking a hard look at that launch now to decide if we should make some adjustments in that launch in the same way that we did on the Progress, given the certain circumstances of that as an international issue with our partners to discuss. Certainly that planning is under way as we speak. These are things that are very important in terms of long-range sensitivities. So we really have to get this thinking right of those things are ongoing.

I think you also know we have another scheduled Progress in June. And that will give an opportunity to resupply. So, for the near term things are stable on the station. But obviously things have changed. And there is some uncertainty as to when the shuttles will return to flying. So we're looking at all potential options for how to keep the International Space Station, first of all, manned and safe and, second of all, productive, if we can do it within the resources we can bring to bear.

KOSTELNIK: No, we're still in the very early stages of trying to decide that. This will take some work. And recall that main focus of our team has been on the shuttle infrastructure and supporting that. And, of course, behind the scene we do have humans on space and we're sensitive to that.

So the planning is taking place. But the coordination and the decision to plan ahead, you know, is not.

But I think you can expect to see in the next few weeks very quickly some decisions in regard, because we're going to have to take some actions that could affect our performance this summer very soon. So you'll hear more about this as we move downstream.

QUESTION: Is it usual for the Air Force to take photos of the shuttle on landing? And did NASA ask any of the military branches to look at the belly or part of the space shuttle while it was still in orbit?

KOSTELNIK: No, as we've pointed out, and is clear from the day-to-day nation evaluation track, it was determined for the precisely the reasons I had mentioned earlier, through analysis, through experience, that we did not have a problem and were not going to experience one.

And I think also we have brought out that earlier on, when in the earlier stages of development, we did have an issue with an impact and maybe some concern over tile, we did try to image the vehicle in space. And what we learned from that experience was that the imagery was just not sufficient a resolution really to offer anything.

Directly to your question about does the Air Force normally track the shuttle, there is a lot of interest any time the shuttle flies. There are a lot of sensors, a lot of capabilities.

And I would offer intuitively it's the same way with people on the ground. They know the shuttle is going to come. And why would we think we have so much good video and so many pictures, because certainly there's something that the nation and the world is interested in. So the flights, the launches, the landings generate a lot of coverage.

So it's not unrealistic and not unusual for a lot of entities to take pictures, because it exercises their system on a very useful target. That happens routinely, whether you ask for or not. Sometimes you get lucky and they just happen to be there looking in your area and you see it.

So what we're doing now through all of the agencies and the federal government, in the same way we are going out basically with the public and the media, we are trying to gather all of this material. If someone has got something, a home video, a picture throughout any of this track, would we like to see it? Yes, we'd be very receptive to doing that.

Internal to government, you can trust us that we are working with all of the agencies to get whatever material we have. This material--and its substantial--is coming into the program office. And will be embargoed and contained for the board. And it will be used by the board to reinforce whatever happened during this time period.

We have a lot of technical capability in this country. We are going to find this problem. I don't think that is really the central issue. It's just going to take us some time to get the material on the ground, to get the material that's available to us in the air and from these sensors, and for somehow, you know, the scientific community and the accident board, who will make the judgments on what these things mean, to integrate this in as coherent way.

QUESTION: Did NASA asked the Air Force to take these photos, or was this, like you said, luck that this happened?

KOSTELNIK: No. No. The ones that we have, the sensors and the imagery, was taken because the Air Force wanted to for their own reason, as a normal (inaudible). There was no special focus on the return of this vehicle.

I mean, if there's one point I would want to get across, until we got to that Greenwich Mean Time of 52 seconds, when we had the first low signal drop-off, the return of this vehicle was absolutely nominal. And that was our expectation.

QUESTION: General, I wanted to ask you, in order to simply preserve the option of having additional Soyuz or Progress vehicles at the disposal of the space station program, are there any production decisions that would have to be made this month?

KOSTELNIK: There are a lot of issues, because with the financial situation that you've been reading about over the last year with the Russian space activity, although their budgets were plussed up, there is not a lot of standing excess capacity, either on the Soyuz lines or the Progress lines.

They have been very solid partners and they're very strongly committed to help, but clearly there will be both programmatic issues, if it is determined to use more vehicles in some way, by the international partnership, you have programmatic issues about when can we get the necessary piece parts to build another spacecraft to support this, whether it's the Soyuz, which is manned, or the Progress, which is unmanned.

So there will be technical issues associated with this, there will be programmatic decisions, cost, schedule and performance, and there will be physical issues.

And remember, throughout all this, that there are legal implications around and consistent with Iran nonproliferation laws that limit our ability to do certain things. These are all things that are under consideration as we speak to understand what we're going to do with the International Space Station.

And again, as I mentioned, right now, without short-term shuttle support, the International Space Station is solid. It is productive. We have a three-man crew. We are continuing to do the research that was planned on this increment. We have resupplied it with Progress.

We are ready to either do a taxi flight or a crew exchange with whatever we determine to be most important and for the long term of the International Space Station with a Soyuz launch in April. And we have a planned Progress resupply ship ready to go in June.

Obviously between this time and June there will be a lot of work to decide. Given the circumstances that have happened, much of which will be driven by: When are we going to return to fly with a shuttle? What is the impact of the problem? How long will it take us to fix the problem? How long will it take us to ensure ourselves and others that its safe to return to fly?

Those are all unknowns. But over the course of the following weeks and months, more information will be forthcoming. That information will be forwarded to the space station side of our team.

And we will be doing the smart things to keep the International Space Station on orbit and resupplied and safe and as productive as we can make it until we bring the shuttle fleet back on-line. And clearly I think, you know, it's been stated we will not continue assembly because we don't have any other vehicles with the up-mast (ph) capability to continue assembly.

So assembly, the remaining assembly, getting us a U.S. core complete and ultimately international partner complete, which we still plan to do, consistent with the fleet returning, is dependent on the three remaining shuttle fleets coming back to surface.

QUESTION: General Kostelnik, Mr. Dittemore talked a little bit yesterday about using probabilistic risk assessment for NASA's fault tree analysis. But has a full PRA been completed since 1995?

KOSTELNIK: I think the answer to that is yes, but I will let Ron provide you the latest.

I know that after the Stanford report from '94 we started down that path. These are numbers and philosophies that we accepted as being useful and have been used. We were in the process, as we speak, of computing the next PRA, which was to have been completed in March, and we're taking active looks now to try to accelerate that process.

So if the answer (sic) is, "Do we recognize that that is an important analysis tool?" the answer is yes, and we have, and it has been in use in NASA since it was introduced by the Stanford report in 1994.

QUESTION: General, I wonder if you could talk about the search for debris west of Fort Worth, and particularly in California. How intense is this? Are you just relying on ground search and public discovery, or are you actively searching for debris using aircraft and so forth? Could you give us some sense of what you're doing and whether you've turned the gain up on that in the last few days?

Let me first address the Fort Worth area. Because of the significant pieces we're finding in and around the Fort Worth area, I think you know we did establish a command post and a collection facility at Fort Worth. So we're very interested, obviously, and think there is a substantial amount of material in the Fort Worth area.

Because of the time lines and the indications that we're getting, we do sense that there could be some farther west, that's why we're asking for some more analysis up to about the 150 miles due west, or northwest of Fort Worth to see if there's any additional material that we can find up there.

Out West it's a much larger area, covering a wide number of states and a lot of supposed sites. We have fairly small teams out there on the ground trying to follow up first on the credible reports that we feel like could be real material, but also working and depending on the public response and output for information as to where we should be looking.

QUESTION: Given the density of the carbon-carbon material in the leading edge of a wing piece apparently found around Fort Worth, would that be consistent with being one of the earliest pieces to have left the spacecraft, do you think?

KOSTELNIK: Well, I think that would be speculative at this time. I mean, the facts about what we know, going back to the engineering time line, is we start to see anomalies on the ground starting about the time that the Columbia crosses the California coast in and around that 53-second time period.

And then we see that the anomalies continue to grow over the time period and culminate with the loss of signal around the Fort Worth area. It's not really certain, you know, what's happening and, of course, this is why we're focusing very much on trying to determine if there are any pieces that are on the ground in California and to get a better sense.

Clearly, with the pieces that we're getting, there will be a lot of aero-analysis given the mass and the aerial characteristics to help us determine, especially to locate pieces that are important in the investigation that we may have not have found.

So there's a lot of that activity going, but it would be, I think, too premature to speculate on that regard.

Now, it is fair to say that the denser, heavier pieces are mostly farther downrange, and the biggest pieces in terms of mass associated with the engines, again, as I mentioned earlier, are the materials we're finding more around the extreme East Texas border and into Louisiana. And there is some good luck on starting to find and recover some of these heavier engine pieces.

QUESTION: I'd like to get back to the Air Force pictures that were taken over New Mexico a minute before the breakup. Are you aware even second-or third-hand that the leading edge of the left wing was jagged in these Air Force pictures, and assuming the left wing was jagged along this leading edge inboard, how much focus or emphasis does that put, once again, back on the foam insulation debris shortly after lift-off?

KOSTELNIK: Well, I think you'll get more information this afternoon from Mr. Dittemore, as they've made really good progress now in laying out the underpinnings of the left wing structure to see where the sensor locations are, to see where some of the items that are failing in this roughly nine or 10 second path that we're seeing. So I think we're moving very aggressively to create, I think, a fairly reasonable picture of what the wing geometry and where the sensor lines lay down. That will give us a lot of sense.

I have seen the photo that, I'm sure, that you're referring to. It is a long-range optical photo taken by an Air Force laboratory. And this optical photo, which is very, very poor resolution, you could draw a lot of observations. But this photo is taken during the descent in between the start of these anomalies in the California coast and before the termination. So I can't really make a judgment on what the image actually shows.

People looking at that would draw their own analysis. Clearly, this is the type of information that the board will make these judgments on and what that it means.

But it is during the time period when we're getting these anomalies on the ground. So whatever is happening is probably consistent with whatever that photo shows.

QUESTION: You had talked earlier about the investigation going beyond technical issues and looking at how you have done business, how you do business. What aspects of NASA's internal culture are you going to look at? Please be specific especially in terms of issues around encouraging dissent and balancing the different goals of engineers, contractors and the public.

KOSTELNIK: I think what I said was, it was transitioning from an initial focus on immediate response to a focus on accident investigation, which is a slightly different word picture than what you just gave me.

But the direct answer to your question, it's really up to the Accident Investigation Board to conduct the investigation and look to the things that they think are relevant. I think they will look at everything in this process.

Will they look at the clearance for flight? Yes. Will they look at the openness of NASA management? Yes.

I think they will look at whatever it is they think is relevant to this accident investigation, and that is, I think the importance and the significance of having an independent board that can do that unconstrained.

Now, this was laid into the contingency plan. This was one of the lessons learned from our experience with the Challenger. It was one of the recommendations of the Rogers commission. In fact, this plan that we're working through and our approach is all consistent with the lessons learned and the proposals from that earlier group.

QUESTION: Just to continue on that approach, you talk about full disclosure, yet you--after repeated requests--you haven't released the names of who are involved on the in-flight foam, impact discussions, the Boeing analysis, the Southwest Research Institute analysis, the Air Force photos. And even more troubling, you've got contractor and NASA employees who have complained about being muzzled by Johnson Space Center when they talk about their qualms.

Will you allow these people to speak without any retribution from NASA, release these studies and photographs and documents? And what do you say about people who are now talking even to Congress about an attitude of stifling dissent in NASA?

KOSTELNIK: Well, I guess, I'm not really sure where that sentiment is coming from. I mean, my own view of NASA, this is probably the most open federal agency that I've ever been personally associated with.

KOSTELNIK: I don't sense that there is this stifling of information, as you put it.

In terms of the individuals that are involved in things, it's a typical government practice to take responsibility for organizations as entities. And I think Mr. Dittemore put that very eloquently in assuming responsibility and that the working engineers on the team were doing their job. But these are just the facts of the matter as we are going.

It's important to remember, as we transition to the Gehman board assuming complete responsibility, both for on-scene and for the analysis, that it's the board that will own all this material. It's the board that will make those decisions. It's the board that will decide what they release and what they do not release.

There are a lot of sensitive means used to understand what's happened during this time period. All those technologies and all those approaches are being provided to the board.

Anybody who has an issue or something to offer should certainly come forward. We're more than receptive to take those. We're more than receptive to funnel those to the board to use in whatever way they feel fit. We not only, you know, welcome that, we encourage it. I mean, anybody who has something to offer that, you know, please come forward.

But prior to this event, throughout the NASA family this has always been the case. So I don't think that there's anything new.

But increasingly as we make this transition, it will be the board that makes decisions on what information they release and what information they choose not to. And in the course of conducting accident investigations, sometimes, for a lot of reasons, things are withheld at the discretion of the board.

NASA will not make those decisions to not come forward or to not share things. This decision will be made by Admiral Gehman and the board.

QUESTION: Following up on the science question, a couple of other ones about space station. Can you bracket how long space station can be kept running with a crew on board using just Progresses and Soyuzes? and has there been any talk whatsoever about asking Congress for a temporary waiver to Iran Proliferation Act so that we can get the extra Soyuz and Progress resources we may need a year or so down the line because of the time frame it takes, or talk with the national partners about either Europe or Japan or Canada buying a Soyuz in exchange for getting a crew member for an interim crew so we can stretch out space station operations until shuttle flights resume?

KOSTELNIK: Well, I think you have talked through a lot of the issues, a lot of the challenges and a lot of the opportunities; and those are all fair.

First, to directly answer your question, as I mentioned earlier, we cannot continue assembly without the shuttle fleet. And I think most people, you know, know that because of the large size of the structures.

Could we support the International Space Station with Soyuz and Progress? Yes, we could. Would that be a change from the manifest that we have today? Yes, it would. Is the Russian space agency in a position to support that right now? The answer is no. Could they be in a posture to do that? Maybe.

These are the kind of issues that we are aggressively working on the side. You're seeing, in one phase, a part of me that's responsible for the shuttle, and we're doing the best we can to keep things solid, to keep work going on the other activities as permitted to expeditiously support the independent board and help them with their analysis, whereas to get to where we can have an early fix, to get to where we can get it fixed, to get to where we can get back to flight and continuing this mission.

There will be a lot of planning on the International Space Station side. I'm sure there will be a great deal of debate on the International Space Station. And I think that's healthy, and we would welcome that.

Behind the scenes, the International Space Station this week has been working and looking and talking with their international partners to see what makes sense.

KOSTELNIK: In the next few weeks, we will make a decision as to what do we do. Those actions will be very forthcoming. And I hope that the American public will follow what the developments on the International Space Station and have a sense for what a great opportunity it is for long-term understanding of human exploration and perhaps a great platform to--for whatever we go next, if we go back to the moon or if we go to Mars or go to deep space libration points. There will be a lot of opportunity downstream.

But today we are still trying to deal with the shuttle tragedy. We are still in a process of trying to support the board. And we are just now beginning the stages of back to normalcy, getting back into transitions, turning over the accident--the formal accident investigation to the independent board and getting on with the rest of the activity as best we can.

QUESTION: If it were thought that this shuttle's reentry was unsafe, was there an emergency plan enabled to use the space station to repair the shuttle? If not, will there be one in the future?

KOSTELNIK: Well, the facts of the matter is, as I mentioned to you earlier, we did not think that we had a safety-of-flight issue. I hope, through the various discussion and the material that has been provided, that that can be accepted as a basis of fact. I'm sure that the Accident Investigation Board will reinforce that through complete review at some point.

It was also mentioned early on that the orbiter Columbia, was heavier than the other three. It was the oldest in terms of age, but not in terms of actual flight. As the one of our more famous astronauts, Bob Crippen, pointed out today down at the Kennedy Space Center, it was actually one of our newest ones in condition, because it had just come out of our refurbishment program, the O&M. And this was only its second flight. So it was actually a--in a relatively new vehicle in terms of its capabilities.

But it is heavier than the other three vehicles and does not have the on-orbit performance that we need to do certain types of tasks of the International Space Station. And I think you will--it may not be obvious, but we use the other high-performing vehicles, Endeavor and Atlantis, in the primary of the large assembly feature for taking up the very heavy pieces that are up now, up on the International Space Station, because Columbia really didn't have the performance to do that.

Along those same lines, directly answering to your question, it would go into a different orbit to do science. And it would not have had the propulsion capabilities to get to the International Space Station. Even if it did, it did not have the require docking mechanism to dock with the International Space Station. So the direct answer is the fact of the matter is Columbia could not have gotten to the International Space Station.

For future flight, obviously we are still beginning to relook. A lot of what we determined to be the cause of Columbia will lead us to, obviously, what the fix is, but also what the operational fix is.

As the program office mentioned, not only are we doing things around the activity we think are critical to this flight, we're relooking all our procedures, given this new piece of information.

And I'm not sure what'll happen. The three remaining shuttles all have, obviously, the docking mechanism; all have the aero-performance to get to the International Space Station. Depending on the problem, there may be scenarios where we use the station as an off-loading point.

All of those kind of things are things we will look at as we first understand what happened to this particular vehicle and then see how it applies to the remaining crew.

QUESTION: Are you using seismic or sonic data to help you pinpoint events that were occurring as Columbia was coming apart?

QUESTION: Are you using seismic or sonic data to help you pinpoint the events that were going on as the shuttle was coming apart?

KOSTELNIK: I don't know that as a fact. But we're doing a data call with all the federal agencies to see what type of material is available. If there are sensors in those mediums that offer something, yes we would be looking at that. And that would be part of the analysis.

QUESTION: My question to you, just to make this issue clear, do you know of any high-resolution shots whatsoever, even one, that shows significant damage to the left side of the orbiter?

QUESTION: I take it the piece found in Fort Worth that you referenced earlier is a red-tag item. Are there other red-tag items that you have found down there?

And I think you also said you are not sure if it's part of the wing. When will you know that? Today, or when will you know that?

KOSTELNIK: This is a leading edge part of the wing. We do not know which wing it is, whether it is the right or the left. I have not personally seen the program's--the mission response team's red list that is at Barksdale with the recovery team.

KOSTELNIK: I would guess that anything around the wing structure, including the left wing, would be one of those red-tag areas.

The earlier reports of a potential wing piece out in California have not been confirmed. We have no confirmation of any shuttle pieces on the ground out there yet, although we continue to look in that regard.

KOSTELNIK: They're trying--in fact, we were just talking about this this morning. I assume that that information will be determined fairly soon. I do not know when, though. Could be as early as this afternoon's meeting.

QUESTION: What progress has been made in recovering the information contained in the 32 seconds that you talked about a couple of days ago? And also, separately, do you think that information will be useful to the committees on the Hill that begin discussing this next week?

And finally, the actions that you took yesterday, have those solved some of the concerns, do you think? Are you confident that this--the commission is independent enough to go forward?

KOSTELNIK: Thirty-two seconds. We--there are literally thousands of inputs of data that are coming. What the program has done is tried to break out those pieces of data that are relevant to, we think, on the left-hand side.

Some of that decorruption for those elements, not for all of the data, but for those elements on the left side, they have decorrupted. They're in the process now of confirming what that data is and what that data means. That is the latest result in that regard.

The others will take a much longer time, so therefore in the very near term that information from that data, with whatever it shows, will be available to the Accident Investigation Board. And so I suspect over the weekend that will probably be there.

The second question as to the independence of the board, I guess that's for other people to decide. Again, this board results from the lessons learned of the Challenger incident. The processes that are in place were the ones recommended by a presidential commission, the Rogers commission, and we have followed that to the letter of the law.

There have been, as you know, I think as the administrator mentioned, recommendations from Congress on the Hill that we should increase membership of that board to add objectivity or to ensure that the board is more independent. And we welcome those suggestions, and there are going to be some members added to the board for that reason and consistent with that recommendation. And those are in the process.

So, it is what it is and it will be for you all to make that judgment. We are very comfortable that we have learned the lessons of Challenger, and that the contingency planning to date and the operations that we have been living through have been very up--very competitive and very competent and up to the task. And we feel like the way ahead with this board is a very consistent and very competent way to move forward.

QUESTION: Can you tell us when Admiral Gehman's going to arrive in Houston and some of the housekeeping of how he's going to set up and when he will be starting his investigation?

KOSTELNIK: Well, he has actually already started. He was on-site at Barksdale on Sunday, and I'm sure you all have seen some imagery of he and his team looking.

So he is on the job and has been on the job very early in the process, taking in a--you know, a view of the on-site activity, looking at and getting involved with the initial Mishap Response Team. So he is already engaged.

They are at the Johnson Space Center as we speak for the discussions this afternoon, and their operation will be in the Houston area, not specifically at the Johnson Space Center, in close proximity so they can get the support they need from NASA expertise, but clearly they will be independent and stand alone. And they're in place today as we speak.

QUESTION: Once the investigation transitions to this board, do you expect that NASA will continue to give these daily or technical and broader briefings?

KOSTELNIK: We're trying to decide on what is the most productive way to meet that need as we speak. And obviously, we control some of the things that we can and should be doing. And I think it's been informative for you all and the population that we all serve to get this early insight as to what the facts that we understand are.

It's been difficult because there's been a lot of subjective thought and a lot of different things raised as to what these facts mean, and maybe that has added some confusion at times. But I think, you know, the experience has been a good one.

But now as we make this transition, the accident board, the information that supports it, the actual material, where they are, what they think, is increasingly the board's responsibilities, not NASA's. We're in a supportive role to help with the recovery and the analysis and things that are required.

In fact, I think you probably know that in the program, because there is now a lot of interest in both the shuttle program and the International Space Station, a lot of the pieces that make this up, NASA will and is continuing to make available subject-matter experts. And we're continuing to provide a wide variety of material, primarily on web sites, electronically so everybody can understand what these things mean, what a tile is, what foam is, what the mission process, how NASA operations. So clearly that will continue in some way from NASA. Fact-based descriptions, explanations of the system, the process, the kinds of things, without getting into the accident.

Increasingly it's the accident board itself that needs to decide how it wants to interface, what information it wants to make forward. And that will be up for the for the board to determine.

So we're trying--and one of the points of the administrator's conversation with the board today at Johnson is to try to figure what is the most productive plan to allow the board to do its job to get to the result that everybody wants as expeditiously as possible, what's the best way to facilitate that. And obviously, we understand your needs and the interest, not only in this country, but across the world--we have 16 partners on the International Space Station who are concerned now with this issue. And it's important, I think, to keep the information flowing. We will do that as best we can.

I don't know when we will announce that plan. It could be as early as this afternoon's press conference with Mr. Dittemore. It could come from the public affairs folks either from us or from the board proper at some time after.

We understand your needs. And we will do the best we can so as not to interfere with the board, to preserve their independence, but to meet the factual needs of the public as best we can.

QUESTION: Do we now have now a time line of visual and other evidence that extends backward further than the anomalies that show up on the data sensors during descent or visual observations at that time?

KOSTELNIK: No. I think the only data that I have seen and the first time when anomalies show up in our sensors is this time period when the shuttle is just off the coast of California, it's that GMT time that ends with, I think, 32 seconds. Maybe we can correct that those who need to know specifically what it is--or maybe it's 52 seconds. But it's right when the shuttle is just off the coast of California.

This is the time when the very first anomaly--and this is an off-scale low indication recall. It's not an indication of heat. It's a sensor just ceasing to function for some reason. That is the first time when an anomaly is noted in the descent.

And then, it runs in through the time period that ends with roughly 59 seconds. And this is the time period just west of Fort Worth when we lose all signal--seconds, the second period.

QUESTION: Getting back to the debris near Fort Worth, can you tell us in general where it was found? Was it on a farm, in a park, under water? And if it is a large piece of the wing with a leading edge and tile which is numbered, why can't you tell us whether it's a left wing or a right wing? Is it too damaged or not big enough or what?

One, I do not know precisely where it is. We just found this part overnight. So we have just got to this part. And clearly the parts are numbered, as you indicate. We should know fairly quickly from the field whether that is a left or a right wing.

And your answer, yes, there are substantial tiles on the structure. So clearly that identity can and will be made. We just don't know--we don't know what it is right now.

In fact, I just got off the phone from a 10 o'clock meeting from the mission investigation team. So this was their report. This is how quickly you're getting real information.

But I suspect that we could know that information fairly soon, perhaps as early as this evening's press conference.

Some programming notes for NASA Television. At 4:30 Eastern today, there will be another press briefing out of the Johnson Space Center with shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore. And you'll be able to ask questions of him from Johnson Space Center, from headquarters, from all of the NASA centers. And we hope you will join us then.

And one other note, tomorrow morning at 8:55 Eastern, NASA Television will be broadcasting a memorial live from the First Baptist Church in Lufkin, Texas.