Newly Released NASA E-Mail Raising Startling New Questions
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Newly released NASA e-mail is raising startling new questions in the probe of the shuttle tragedy. The messages show that engineers were concerned that Columbia's wing had been damaged and that the crew could face disaster upon re-entry. For example, one NASA contractor wrote, "Why are we talking about this on the day before landing and not the day after launch?" Joining us now from Miami with more on the investigation, our national correspondent John Zarrella. Good morning, John.</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. In fact, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe will be going before the House Science Committee today to talk about NASA's '04 budget, and you can bet he's going to be asked some very serious questions one day after the memo you indicated and several other memos he will be grilled stiffly over. In fact, one Langley engineer, expert on wheel wells, issued a memo several days before the attempted landing of the shuttle Columbia, and in his memo, he said, "It seems to me that the benefits of an EVA to go look at damage has more pros than cons. I can't imagine that an astronaut, even on a crappy tether arrangement, would cause more damage than he is going out to look at." The reason that memo was written, of course, NASA has maintained that sending astronauts out to check tile damage might cause more problems than there were existing already. Now, after that memo, he released another memo, another one of these e-mails, in which he wrote to a colleague, "What's going on? Is everybody just going to cross their fingers?" Following the release of these e-mails, a NASA flight controller, at the Johnson Space Center, who had also been involved in writing e- mails about potential catastrophic scenarios because of tile damage, he issued a statement and actually talked to the media last night, saying that, even had they known that there was serious damage to the tile, there might not have been anything they could have done to save the crew.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know that there's a whole lot we could have done had we known that there was -- and this is all presuming this is a tile damage thing and we don't know this yet -- but had we looked at tile damage and known that we had a problem, at that point in the flight, I don't think that we had a whole lot of options.</s>ZARRELLA: Paula, the problem is they never ran any of that up the flagpole believing, that engineering analysis that had been done after the liftoff of "Columbia" was showed that, in fact, the damage wasn't catastrophic, and that it probably would not be a problem for Columbia's landing. Of course, now, hindsight, 20/20 -- Paula.</s>ZAHN: This hearing should be interesting to watch, when Mr. O'Keefe goes before members of Congress. Thanks for the preview. Appreciate it, John. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com Questions>