Following are excerpts from NASA communications with the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, beginning at 8:31 a.m., as recorded by The New York Times. NASA assisted in clarifying parts and identifying the speakers, who included Jeff Kling, the shuttle's maintenance, mechanical arm and crew systems officer, or MMACS; Leroy Cain, the flight director; Bill Foster, the ground controller; Charlie Hobaugh, the capsule communicator; Col. Rick D. Husband, the flight commander; Mike Sarafin, the guidance, navigation and control officer, or GNC; Laura Hoppe, instrumentation and communications officer, or INCO; Katie Rogers, emergency, environmental and consumables operation manager, or EECOM; and Richard Jones, flight dynamics officer, or FDO.KLING F.Y.I., I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle, hydraulic return temperatures. Two of them on system one and one in each of systems two and three.
CAIN Four hyd return temps?
KLING To the left outboard and left elevon.
CAIN O.K. Is there anything common to them? D.S.P. [digital signal processor] or M.D.M. [multiplexer-de-multiplexer, like the former an electronic processor that handles date], or anything? I mean, you're telling me you lost them all at exactly the same time.
KLING No, not exactly. They were within probably four or five seconds of each other.
CAIN O.K, where are those — where is that instrumentation located?
KLING All four of them are located in the aft part of the left wing, right in front of the elevons, elevon actuators. And there is no commonality.
CAIN No commonality. [long pause] MMACS, tell me again which systems they're for.
KLING That's all three hydraulic systems. It's — two of them are to the left outboard elevon and two of them to the left outboard.
CAIN O.K. I got you. Flight guidance, we're processing drag with good residual.
FEMALE VOICE Copy.
CAIN Thank you.
FOSTER Flight, [this is] G.C.
CAIN Go.
FOSTER Ground enabled for the landing count.
CAIN Thank you.
CAIN G.N.C. [guidance, navigation and control officer Mike Sarafin], flight.
SARAFIN Flight, G.N.C.
CAIN Everything look good to you, control, and right and everything is nominal, right?
SARAFIN Control's been stable through the rolls that we've done so far flying. We have good trims. I don't see anything out of the ordinary.
CAIN O.K. Come back, flight.
KLING Flight, MMACS
CAIN All indications for your hydraulic system indications are good.
KLING They're all good. We've had good quantities all the way across.
CAIN And the other temps are normal?
MALE VOICE The other temps are normal, yes, sir.
CAIN And when you say you lost these, are you saying that they went ——
MALE VOICE 3 All four of them are offscale low.
CAIN or — offscale low.
MALE VOICE 3 And they were all staggered. They were, like I said, within several seconds of each other.
CAIN O.K.
MALE VOICE 1 Flight.
MALE VOICE 2 Oh, we have the balloon. It is being run through D.D.S. [descent design system — balloons that take atmospheric readings] right now.
KLING Flight, MMACS
CAIN Go.
KLING We just lost tire pressure on left outboard and left inboard, both tires.
HOBAUGH And Columbia, Houston. We see your tire pressure messages ——
MALE VOICE 3 — and we did not copy your last —
MALE VOICE 2 Is your instrumentation, MMACS .
MALE VOICE 1 Our flight, MMACS, tires are also off.
HUSBAND Roger, uh —— [last voice communication from Columbia].
HOPPE INCO
CAIN Go.
HOPPE Just checking a few hits here. We're right up on top of the tail. [The shuttle's tail was between its broadcast antenna and a relay satellite, disputing communications.]
CAIN And there's no commonality between all these tire pressure instrumentations and the hydraulic return instrumentations.
KLING No, sir, there's not. We've also lost the nose gear down talk back and the right main gear talk back [a device that broadcasts information on whether the landing gear is up or down].
CAIN Nose gear and right main gear down talk backs?
KLINGYes, sir.
ROGERS EECOM, [emergency, environmental and consumables operation manager] CAIN EECOM
ROGERS I've got four temperature sensors on the bottom-line data that are offscale low.
HOPPE Flight, INCO. I didn't expect this kind of a hit on comm.
FLIGHT CONTROLLER Do you see how far away from U.H.F. that two minute clock did?
HOPPE Affirmative, flight.
G.N.C. Flight. G.N.C.
CAIN Go.
G.N.C. If we have any reason to suspect any sort of controllability issue, I would keep the control cards handy on page four-dash-13. [This refers to a procedure in a flight manual and indicates that ground controllers believe the shuttle has a serious problem.
FLIGHT CONTROL Copy.
CAIN INCO, we were rolled left last day we had and you were expecting a little bit of ratty comm, but not this long.
HOPPE That's correct, flight. Expect it to be a little bit intermittent. And this is pretty solid right here.
CAIN No onboard system config changes right before we lost data.
HOPPE That is correct, flight. All look good.
CAIN Still all on string two [a communications setup] and everything looked good.
HOPPE String two looking good.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, comm check.
MALE VOICE 1flight.
CAIN Go.
JONES Closing end point with the one-hour balloon shows us touching down at 1496, 1,500 feet down the runway. Our cross wind right now is on the left - from the left on the three-three end.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.
KLING Flight, MMACS.
FLIGHT CONTROL MMACS .
KLING On the tire pressures, we did see them go erratic for a little bit before they went away, so I do believe it's instrumentation.
FLIGHT CONTROL O.K.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.
MALE VOICE 1 Flight, final?.
MALE VOICE 2 Go.
MALE VOICE 1 I know this data's a little late. The one-hour balloon for Texas for winds for -
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.
MALE VOICE 1 I think we're in a smaller wind persistence case than that. In other words, we shouldn't expect as big of a change. I'm comfortable with 1,500 feet down the runway.
GROUND CONTROL Flight, G.C.
FLIGHT CONTROL Go.
FLIGHT CONTROL MILARS (Merritt Island Tracking Station) not reporting any R.F. [radio frequency transmission from shuttle] at this time.
CAIN FDO, when are you expecting tracking?
JONES One minute ago, flight.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.
MALE VOICE 1 no . . . yet.
MALE VOICE 2 Copy.
HOBAUGH Columbia, Houston, U.H.F. comm check.
HOPPE Flight, INCO
CAIN Go.
HOPPE Could I could swap strings in the blind?
CAIN O.K. over.
HOPPE Flight, INCO. String one in the blind.
CAIN INCO
HOPPE I've commanded string one in the blind flight.
CAIN Copy.
FOSTER MILAR'S taking one of their antennaes off into a search mode.
CAIN Copy.
MALE VOICE 3 Final flight.
MALE VOICE 4 Go ahead flight.
CAIN Have we gotten any tracking data?
FOSTER We got a blip of tracking data. It was a bad data point flight. We do not believe that was the orbiter. We are in a search pattern with our C bands at this time. We do not have any valid data at this time.
CAIN O.K. Any other trackers that we can go to?
FOSTER Let me start talking flight . . . navigator.
MALE VOICE 1 Fi ——. do you have any tracking?
MALE VOICE 2 No sir.
CAIN Go.
GROUND CONTROLLER: 2 My C bands have not acquired anything. We are only acquiring false locks at this time.
MALE VOICE 3 Copy Final.
CAIN O.K. All flight controllers on the flight loop we need to kick off the F.C.O.H. [flight control operations handbook] contingency plan procedure. F.C.O.H. checklist page 2.8 dash 5.
MALE VOICE 1 Final flight.
MALE VOICE 2 Go ahead. Do you have any information or reports from space command?
CAIN O.K., all flight controllers on page 9 of the F.C.O.H. procedure you need to make sure you step through the actions required in step 20. That's for your work station logs display printouts. There's a whole list of data collection items that we need to make sure we log through.
CAIN Folks, listen up again on the flight loop. No phone calls offsite outside of this room. Our discussions are on these loops on the recorded . . . loops only. No data, no phone calls, no transmissions anywhere into or out.
