Astronauts' remains found as US suspends space programme

Human remains were among the scattered wreckage recovered yesterday from the Columbia disaster as three separate investigations started to examine what caused the ageing shuttle to tear apart in the skies above Texas.

While America mourned the loss of the seven astronauts and staggered from the blow to its national pride, Nasa announced the suspension of its shuttle flight programme and investigators focused their attention on possible damage to thermal tiles on the shuttle's left wing during lift-off on 16 January.

Officials said the first indication of trouble on Saturday was the loss of temperature sensors in the left wing's hydraulic system. Last night Nasa scientists were focusing on a sudden and uneven rise in temperature within the shuttle minutes before it broke up. The crew were apparently unaware of any problems with the spacecraft.

An initial review of flight data revealed the temperature inside the mid-section of Columbia's fuselage rose by 15Cin five minutes. As the temperature increased the shuttle experienced increased drag on its left side.

Investigators said the new data could be a crucial clue to what caused the disaster. They said the readings could point to a problem caused by a missing thermal panel.

Meanwhile, President George Bush will raise Nasa's budget for fiscal 2004 to £15.47bn (£9.4bn), an increase of nearly $470m, an administration official said yesterday, promising that investigators would look into whether past cutbacks played a part in the disaster.

The Nasa administrator, Sean O'Keefe, announced that a retired navy admiral, Harold Gehman, would head an independent investigation. He said Admiral Gehman ­ who headed the inquiry into the bombing of USS Cole ­ would not focus on "any pet theory or any one approach", but would look into every aspect of the disaster. In addition, Nasa will run its own inquiry and there will be a congressional investigation. "We're going to find out what led to this, retrace all the events and leave absolutely no stone unturned in that process," Mr O'Keefe said.

Investigators know they face a challenging task. The explosion of Columbia, 39 miles above the Earth and travelling at more than 18 times the speed of sound, left pieces scattered across hundreds of miles. Authorities said much of the debris was unlikely to be recovered.

"We're doing what we can," Sheriff Thomas Kerrs of Nacogdoches County, Texas, said, adding that his office had received more than 1,000 calls reporting wreckage.

Last night, Nasa said remains from all seven astronauts had been found. Pieces of the spacecraft were reported across east Texas counties and in Louisiana. An astronaut's charred cloth badge and a flight helmet were among the items found and there were at least two reports of human remains being discovered.

In Hemphill, Texas, a hospital employee found what seemed to be a charred torso, thigh bone and skull on a rural road. Nearby, two boys discovered a charred human leg. "From the hip to the foot, it's all there, scorched from the fire," the boys' father, Bob White, told the Dallas Morning News.

A piece of the shuttle the size of a family car fell into Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana line. There were also reports of pieces of potentially crucial wreckage being taken by souvenir hunters. The debris is being taken by lorry to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for analysis by a team of 20 engineers from the United Space Alliance, a contractor for Nasa's shuttle programme.

Nasa said the experts would examine the possible role of the shuttle's wing, which was hit by a piece of foam from a fuel tank during take-off. "As we look at that now in hindsight ... we can't discount that there might be a connection," the shuttle programme manager, Ron Dittemore, said.

At the same time, the death of the seven astronauts has led some to question whether the shuttle fleet ­ 22 years old and flying twice as long as its builders first envisioned ­ should still be in operation.

Reports from the General Accounting Office, the National Academy of Sciences and Nasa's own advisory boards have all called for upgrades to the shuttle to improve its safety. Some of the technology isso old that engineers have at times been forced to look on internet auction sites to obtain the software they require.

"Nasa was told in no uncertain terms ... it must not rely on the shuttle, that the shuttle was a complicated and fragile technology," Alex Roland, a former Nasa employee said. "Nasa simply did not take that seriously."

A German astronaut, who was in orbit on Columbia in 1993, said he believed the crew should have been instructed to check for possible damage to the shuttle. "They could have inspected that left wing in space, and then they would probably have determined there was major damage," Ulrich Richter said.

But Mr Dittemore said that if damage incurred during lift-off was the cause of the shuttle's demise, there was nothing the astronauts could have done in orbit to repair it.