![]() Because of six-foot waves, no recovery operations were possible today.īurnette said that the Preserver returned to port Saturday night, but said she could not comment on whether it carried any crew cabin debris or remains. "We're talking debris, and not a crew compartment, and we're talking remains, not bodies," she said.īecause of stiff winds and ocean currents, it "may take several days" to complete the recovery off the Florida coast, NASA officials said. Deborah Burnette, said that neither the crew compartment nor the bodies were intact. In deference to the families, the agency said it will release no further details until the recovery is completed and the remains are identified. The families of the seven crew members were notified of the discovery over the weekend. "Subsequent dives provided positive identification of the Challenger crew compartment debris and the existence of crew remains," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration statement said. On Saturday, another group of divers from the USS Preserver, who the space agency said were "thoroughly briefed on debris identification," began to search the area. Sarao show a large number of twisted fragments and flakes of metal, crumpled window frames, wiring, broken electronics boxes and a wooden scaffolding holding up a ghostly reconstruction of the rear part of the crew cabin.Navy divers have located wreckage of the crew compartment of the space shuttle Challenger lying on the ocean bottom in 100 feet of water and confirmed that it contains remains of the astronauts killed nearly six weeks ago, NASA said today.ĭivers, aided by sonar, made a "possible" identification of the crew cabin late Friday afternoon. Searches of the ocean floor reportedly found only pieces of the cabin and other debris. ![]() Engineers believe the cabin remained intact throughout its fall to earth, with some astronauts probably conscious until it crashed into the ocean at high speed. 28, 1986, when the Challenger exploded shortly after its launching, show that the crew cabin survived the initial explosion and the general breakup of the ship's fuselage. Photos taken by ground-based telescopes on Jan. The cabins, made of aluminum alloy plates, comprise all of the astronauts' living and work areas, including the flight deck, and have 10 windows. The crew cabins of the shuttles are cramped, three-level spaces 17 1/2 feet high and slightly more than 16 feet wide. He added that, under the law, the photos could now be released to anyone requesting them. Jeff Vincent, a spokesman for the space agency, said that it was the first public release of such material and that the photographs had been screened to protect the privacy of the astronauts' families. The agency then released a limited selection of photos to him. After his appeal for a reversal was also denied, he sued NASA last year. NASA has shown great reluctance to release information about the dead crew members, their personal effects and the shuttle's cabin, citing the privacy interests of the crew's families. "I did it to help people understand what happened to that structure, and to help them learn how to build better ones," Mr. ![]() 3 to Ben Sarao, a New York City artist who had sued the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Freedom of Information Act for the pictures. But they could eventually help aerospace engineers design safer spaceships. Seven years after the Challenger disaster killed seven astronauts, including a schoolteacher, the space agency has been forced to release some of the many photographs it took of the shuttle's pulverized crew cabin.įorty-eight pictures of the wreckage, which was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral, Fla., appear to show nothing startling about the fate of the Challenger and its crew. ![]()
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