'It's an interesting piece of data that's part of our equation that we're putting in with everything else,' Dittemore said. Officials say some evidence may have been destroyed during re-entry, when the shuttle was exposed to temperatures of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Ron Dittemore, the space shuttle program manager, said investigators will look for new clues that might be pulled out of NASA's flight computers - perhaps including data for an additional 32 seconds after communications with the shuttle went silent before the craft broke up.Įven if NASA officials succeed in retrieving the information, determining the cause of Saturday's disaster will not be easy. 'It's still in the process of identification.'Īnd as authorities continue the grim task of identifying the remains, NASA officials said they hoped they could find clues to determine what destroyed the second space shuttle in 17 years. 'We found remains from all the astronauts,' Bob Cabana, NASA director of flight crew operations, told reporters tonight. 2, 2003 - One day after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the sky, a NASA official said remains from all seven astronauts had been found while another official voiced hope that hidden data on computers would shed light on what caused the disaster.

Challenger space shuttle bodies