Posted: Thu, Feb 13, 2003, 1:11 PM ET (1811 GMT)
NASA released Wednesday a series of email messages exchanged among engineers while the shuttle Columbia was in orbit last month, including one that suggested that a potential problem with the shuttle's left wing landing gear could prove catastrophic. In the message, Bob Daugherty, an engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center, said that there was the possibility that the gear would not deploy if there had been "a substantial breach" of the wheel well. Daugherty feared that the tires could explode when exposed to the heat of reentry, blowing off the gear door and creating a situation he described as potentially "catastrophic". NASA described the email exchange as "typical of what takes place during a mission" and that the Langley engineer had raised no new concerns the shuttle engineers were not already aware of. Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reported Thursday that shuttle telemetry showed that the left landing gear had deployed 26 seconds before contact was lost with the orbiter. Had the gear actually deployed, while the shuttle was still flying in the upper atmosphere at hypersonic velocities, it would have caused a catastrophic failure according to engineers. NASA officials caution, though, that it is more likely that the sensor used to determine when the landing gear is deployed was simply malfunctioning.

Related Links:

•  AFP article
•  Los Angeles Times article
•  New York Times article
•  NASA press release about emails (with link to PDF copy of message)
•  Orlando Sentinel article