"It was a very short time," Hale said. "We know it was very disorienting motion that was going on. There were a number of alarms that went off simultaneously. And the crews, of course, are trained to maintain or regain control in a number of different ways and we have evidence from (recovered debris that they) were trying very hard to regain control. We're talking about a very brief time, in a crisis situation, and I'd hate to go any further than that."

Said Melroy: "I'd just like to add we found that those actions really showed the crew was relying on their training in problem solving and problem resolution and that they were focused on attempting to recover the vehicle when they did detect there was something off nominal. They showed remarkable systems knowledge and problem resolution techniques. Unfortunately, of course, there was no way for them to know with the information they had that that was going to be impossible. But we were impressed with the training, certainly, and the crew."