Nasa was warned nine years ago that the space shuttle could fail catastrophically if debris hit the vulnerable underside of its wings during liftoff — the very scenario that may have brought down Columbia.
After receiving the warning, Nasa made changes in equipment and flight rules to lessen the risk of debris breaking loose, Paul Fischbeck, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who conducted the analysis, said on Tuesday.
”There are very important tiles under there. If you lose the tiles on those stretches … it can cause the shuttle to be lost,” he said.
That is the area on Columbia where Nasa is focusing in its investigation into Saturday’s disaster, which killed seven astronauts.
Fischbeck and a colleague at Stanford University studied the damage caused by debris during the first 50 shuttle launches and concluded that on average, 25 thermal tiles were damaged per flight. – Sapa-AP