"... Effort to Alter the Public's Perceptions ..."

"Shuttle Photos: Issue of Crew's Fate"

The excerpts below are from the above article in the NY times,
dated April 25, 1986, by David E. Sanger:

============================================
The photographs released Wednesday showing the space shuttle
Challenger plunging toward the ocean suggest that within days of
the disaster officials of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration suspected the crew cabin remained largely intact
until it hit the water, sources familiar with the investigation say.

Nevertheless, in public hearings and news conferences, officials
of the space agency said nothing to contradict the widely held
view that an explosion instantly disintegrated the craft and killed
its crew.

....

The 10 photographs were taken by a high-speed, 70-millimeter
NASA camera two miles from the launching pad. A NASA
spokesman said that the photographs were prepared for
investigators only recently, but some NASA officials say they
were undoubtedly developed within a week of the Jan. 28
disaster that killed seven astronauts.

The photographs were not made public for nearly three months,
and then only after several news agencies filed requests under
the Freedom of Information Act. The space agency has still
declined to make public hundreds of other pictures taken by the
camera, which critics contend would show the crew cabin,
apparently intact, spinning wildly out of control in its eight-mile
plunge into the ocean off Cape Canaveral.

.... ... ...

At Cape Kennedy, Hugh Harris, the NASA spokesman, denied
that the agency was involved in any effort to alter the public's
perceptions about the accident or manage the news through
selective distribution of evidence.

....

While it is unclear what was done to enhance the photographic
images, NASA says that each of the prints was blown up from
only a tiny section of the original negatives.

Veterans of the space program said that this is not the first time
the space agency has been accused of withholding information
about accident investigations. The day after the Apollo 1 flash
fire that killed three astronauts on the launching pad, NASA
officials suggested at a news conference that all three had died
instantly. Several days later, however, word leaked out that a
tape recording showed more than a minute of frantic efforts by
the astronauts to escape from the capsule.
===========================================

Since NASA has never conclusively proved that the 51-L crew
died at water impact, I have referred to it as NASA's illusion.

--
John Thomas Maxson, Retired Engineer (Aerospace)
Author, The Betrayal of Mission 51-L (www.mission51l.com)