Kevin Hames
NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
Presented at: 6th Annual Military & Aerospace Applications of Programmable Logic Devices International Conference Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington D.C. 9-11 September 2003
Abstract
Recovery and analysis of the avionics from the Space Shuttle Columbia proved invaluable to investigators in their examination of the factors that contributed to the tragic loss of crew and spacecraft at the end of the STS-107 mission. Data stored within some of the avionic systems provided missing pieces of the puzzle that explained what happened to Columbia as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere on its way to landing at the Kennedy Space Center.
Getting the data from the avionics was not straight forward, however. The efforts of thousands of people, from the searchers in East Texas that recovered the avionics, to the engineers who extracted the data from the recovered systems, made it possible for the crash investigation team to narrow in what happened to Columbia.
This paper describes some of the investigations that the NASA and contractor engineering teams accomplished in order to provide the investigation team with critical data. In particular, the recovery of data from the flight data recorder and the Global Positioning System receiver are described. Lessons learned that may help designers of future avionic systems is given. No attempt is made in this paper to analyze the data obtained from these systems, nor to speculate of the causes of the accident.