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

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.