Photos, video of shuttle flyby over Bay Area could be revealing

By RON HARRIS
Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Trekking to the top of Mt. Hamilton, some 4,000 feet above the Silicon Valley, amateur astronomer Rick Baldridge took still photos and video footage on Feb. 1 of what he thought would be an uneventful re-entry flyover by the space shuttle Columbia.

What Baldridge captured on slide film and videotape could prove to be much more images he claims show pieces coming off the doomed shuttle as it soared high overhead in the early morning sky.

``We did see four particles coming off the shuttle. Coming off at several intervals and that's very unusual, obviously,'' Baldridge said in an interview.

Baldridge's original film and videotape is now in the hands of NASA officials at both the Johnson Space Center in Houston and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, he said. NASA has collected more than 1,300 such photographs and videotapes so far.

The 45-year-old manufacturing engineer from Campbell was well equipped the night he, his brother-in-law and two friends went to Mt. Hamilton to witness the shuttle fly-by. Baldridge had a Sony video camera and two Nikon still cameras loaded with slide film.

Baldridge's video footage of the shuttle streaking across the pre-dawn sky is the most telling, he says. The trail left from the spacecraft glows brighter in several spots, unlike the smooth thin trail left in previous re-entries he's witnessed.

``There are some definite brightenings in the trail that the shuttle left on the film and those are not normal at all from previous shuttle re-entries that I've recorded on film,'' Baldridge said.

Baldridge and his companions wasted no time in processing the slide film shortly after the shuttle passed.

``We developed them first, the very same day Saturday,'' Baldridge said. ``We had them professionally scanned and the originals were given to NASA.''

Baldridge said he didn't see the alleged aberrations with his naked eye as he watched Columbia fly past. Only later, upon reviewing the video footage and still shots, could he discern the shedding of debris, he said.

``On the video they're fairly faint. But again, they were obvious,'' Baldridge said. He also said the items he believes to have broken off the shuttle were not mere tricks of light.

``They weren't artifacts or reflections in the optical system,'' he said.

Most of the recovered debris field has been confined to East Texas and Louisiana, and NASA officials say no confirmed shuttle parts have been found west of Texas.

Baldridge works with the Peninsula Astronomical Society, a San Francisco Bay area group of some 200 astronomy enthusiasts. He's seen and photographed three previous shuttle re-entries and said he hopes his visual evidence can aid NASA in its investigation of the crash that took seven lives and threw a nation into mourning.

``I hope it helps them,'' Baldridge said. ``It's one small piece in a very large puzzle.''

Another potential clue to the tragedy is being published in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, which digitally enhanced a photo of Columbia's re-entry over California. The time-lapse photograph was taken by Gene Blevins, a freelance photographer with the Daily News of Los Angeles.

The photograph, which was taken about two minutes before sensors showed an unusual rise in the shuttle's left wings, shows a sudden expansion and color change in the trail, then a bright spot. NASA requested and received copies of Blevin's time-lapse photographs, one was taken digitally and the other on traditional film.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)