NASA officials said Sunday that space shuttle Columbia experienced a sudden and extreme rise in temperature on the fuselage moments before the craft broke apart. NASA space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said the temperature rise -- 60 degrees over five minutes in the mid-fuselage -- was followed by an increased sign of drag that caused the shuttles computerized flight control system to try to make an adjustment to the flight pattern. Dittemore cautioned that the evidence was still preliminary, but that one of the possibilities was that there been damage or a loss of thermal tiles that protect the shuttle from burning up during re-entry into the Earths atmosphere. "We are making progress," Dittemore said, adding that the combination of new engineering data and an observer who reported seeing debris from the shuttle while it was still passing over California may create "a path that may lead us to the cause."
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