Posted: Wed, Feb 26, 2003, 7:44 PM ET (0044 GMT)
New email messages released Wednesday showed that engineers continued to discuss the potential for a reentry accident involving the space shuttle Columbia up to the day before the accident itself, with one engineer describing in eerily-accurate detail what could happen to the orbiter. The emails showed that several engineers were discussing accident scenarios on January 31, the day before reentry and after mission controllers had made the decision that any damage the shuttle sustained during liftoff would not affect the reentry. One engineer provided one detailed description of what could happen, offering a course of events striking similar to what actually happened to Columbia. Other messages show that veteran flight director Wayne Hale made an initial request for the Air Force to use telescopes or spacecraft to photograph the shuttle and look for evidence of damage. NASA released Wednesday images of the shuttle taken from an Air Force telescope in Hawaii; while detailed, the images did not show the underside of the orbiter or the leading edge of the left wing. NASA officials had said earlier this month that they did not request any imaging because they believed that the damage would be too small for any Air Force assets to see it.

Related Links:

•  AP article via Washington Post
•  Spaceflight Now article