NASA to video Discovery's launch on Saturday

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA photo analysts Tom Rieckhoff and Danny Osborne were watching a videotape of Columbia's launch in 2003 when they saw the first evidence of the problem that doomed the shuttle.

As an image of the spacecraft roaring toward space flickered across a TV screen the morning after the launch, they saw a big piece of foam fly off the huge, orange external fuel tank. The chunk hit the shuttle's left wing, disintegrating into a whitish cloud.

"It was like, 'Whoa, what was that?'" Rieckhoff recalled last week in his first interview about the catastrophic accident.

What the two witnessed in their offices at the Marshall Space Flight Center became known around the world once the breakup of Columbia was traced to the problem at liftoff. They will be back at their posts, with an array of new cameras rolling, when Discovery is launched Saturday. Only the second shuttle flight since Columbia, the mission already is surrounded by questions about safety.

"I hope there's nothing to see this time," said Osborne.

Rieckhoff leads the photo analysis team at Marshall, one of three NASA centers where experts pore over hundreds of video and still images after a shuttle launch looking for evidence of any potential problems, particularly falling foam.

The work has become more critical since Columbia came apart during re-entry, killing seven astronauts. An investigation concluded superheated gases got into the shuttle through a hole created when foam hit the wing during liftoff, causing the orbiter to burn up in the atmosphere.

A piece of the dense foam also struck Discovery during its flight last year, causing minor damage that still concerns engineers.

Needing the best quality images as quickly as possible after launch, NASA has expanded and improved its photo analysis program since Columbia. Digital imagery has replaced videotapes, and high-definition monitors have replaced old TV tubes.

The agency will use 107 still and video cameras to record the launch at the Kennedy Space Center, tracking the shuttle until it disappears into space. Still more cameras are attached to the shuttle itself, and astronauts take additional pictures of the external tank after it separates from the shuttle.

Images will be loaded into a new computer system that lets engineers and managers view the launch imagery more easily, and a new imaging system will show any pockmarks in the external tank in a three-dimensional view.

"This gives you a much better idea of what a large piece of foam looks like," said analyst Bo Parker, wearing 3-D glasses as he demonstrates the system.

The heart of the operation is watching video after video of the launch.

On launch day, Rieckhoff and his co-workers will be in a dark room at a console lined with four video screens. They'll begin reviewing high-definition launch video moments after the shuttle clears the tower. Similar work goes on at the photo analysis offices at the Kennedy and Johnson space centers.

In all, it will take about four days to go over as many as 90 films and videos from the launch. The analysts will stay in the dark hour after hour, looking at video most people never see.

Despite the technology, there's no computer program to make potential problems jump out of the images; people have to look at the videos -- once and again, forward and backward, fast and slow.

"It takes a little discipline to stay focused," said Rieckhoff. "There's no horseplay, and we don't let visitors in. It's pretty serious in there."

Rieckhoff said it was a twist of fate that the key images from Columbia's last mission were first viewed at Marshall. He and Osborne started their day with the videotape that showed foam hitting the shuttle; analysts at Johnson and Kennedy looked at other Columbia imagery first.

"We just happened to be the ones sitting there," he said.

All the NASA centers got involved in the analysis once the problem was spotted, and concerns raised by the Columbia images made their way to top management -- although an investigation found key executives didn't take the problem seriously enough as the shuttle headed for re-entry.

Rather than possibly helping spur a rescue attempt, the pictures played a critical role in investigating the tragedy. And a stroke of luck helped.

The shuttle often flies through clouds. Had Columbia not been in clear air when the foam hit the wing, Rieckhoff said, no camera could have ever captured the image that became a smoking gun.

"We still wouldn't know what had happened," he said.