Smithsonian's Aging Shuttle Enterprise To Aid Columbia Probe, Reports Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Business Editors/Aerospace/Science Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 14, 2003

Aviation Week & Space Technology reports in its March 17 issue that critical wing and landing gear door sections from the original space shuttle Enterprise, now housed by the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, will be tested as part of the Columbia accident investigation.

The Enterprise hardware will be tested to help determine whether "aging spacecraft" factors such as materials degradation could have played a pivotal role in the tragedy.

Completed in 1976, Enterprise never flew in space. But 25 years ago it was dropped from a 747 carrier aircraft five times over Edwards AFB, Calif. to demonstrate the shuttle's landing characteristics. Parts of its reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) wing leading edge mechanisms are as old as those on Columbia, and could yield clues on whether the age of the hardware was a factor in the Columbia tragedy.

Named Enterprise by NASA after the spaceship in the Star Trek television series, it has been housed by the Smithsonian for more than 15 years at Dulles International Airport near Washington D.C. Enterprise is to go on public display for the first time in December at new National Air and Space Museum facilities there.

AW&ST also reports in the March 17 issue that large RCC sections of Columbia's left wing may have "caved in" rather than fallen off, as the wing of the doomed spacecraft began to melt before the shuttle disintegrated over Texas Feb. 1. Accident board members have said that wind tunnel tests show the loss one or two RCC panels alone could not have created the tremendous aerodynamic forces acting on the orbiter as the emergency developed.

Although parts of the critical leading edge could have separated, investigators said it is also possible that as heat softened the wing's aluminum, large sections of the massive leading edge, some of it the size of a kayak, may have collapsed backwards into the aluminum wing structure, the magazine said. .

AW&ST reported earlier in March that the failure of small "gap-seal" tiles mounted on a carrier panel between the wing and lower section of the RCC could have played a role in the accident. And the magazine reports in its March 17 issue that NASA engineers have raised concerns that potential water damage in the carrier panel area could be a factor. NASA managers told Aviation Week they are investigating whether water could have seeped into the carrier panel area when Columbia was rained upon as it sat horizontally outside a hanger awaiting refurbishment in 1999 at Boeing facilities in Palmdale, Calif.

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EDITORS NOTE: Full text of the Aviation Week & Space Technology article, as well as interviews providing analysis, are available.