Following the conclusions of the commission that investigated the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia and the death of all seven astronauts February 1, NASA has added 10 ground cameras to the 13 existing ones.

The aim is to better spot a takeoff incident, such as the dislodging of a piece of booster rocket insulation that damaged Columbia's heat shield tiles and caused the disaster.

During Columbia's launch, one of the existing cameras recorded the damage sequence 81 seconds after liftoff. But the poor-quality images did not convince NASA engineers of the seriousness of the situation.

With the addition of the equipment, NASA is hoping to get continuous usable images of the shuttle from at least three angles from the moment of takeoff to the separation of its two booster rockets, Robert Page, head of Kennedy's image center, told AFP.

"We need to insure three views on each side of the shuttle, so I'll have five cameras on each side to make sure we have three good ones," he said.

"We need to provide views of the space shuttle from liftoff to at least SRB (solid rocket boosters) separation."

Page is using three types of video cameras, backed up by still cameras -- short-range, designed for liftoff to 57 seconds, mid-range for up to 110 seconds and long-range to 165 seconds.

The long-range cameras, with focal lengths of up to 10,000 mm, or 10 meters, are mind-boggling in appearance, dwarfing the 600 mm telephoto lenses used by professional news photographers.

The cost: 400 dollars per centimeter of focal length, or 400,000 dollars per objective, said Page.

The speed of the new video cameras has also been stepped up, to 100 frames per second as opposed to 60 in the old ones.

NASA's traditional film cameras will be teamed up with high-definition digital cameras, he said. The digital camera images are not as sharp as from film, but they provide greater speed and reliability.

NASA will now be able to examine digital images within the hour following liftoff, as opposed to the 24 to 30 hours needed to process oceans of film, said Page.

The video cameras will be strategically placed in concentric circles around the shuttle. The short-range equipment will be placed within 100 meters (yards) from the launch pad, shielded from the rocket blast that usually leaves the surrounding grass in ashes.

"Everything is burned here after the launch, but not the roots, the grass grows again," said Manny Virata, press relations officer at the Kennedy Space Center, gesturing at a blackened swath separating the launch pad from a marsh and from the Atlantic Ocean.

As powerful as they are, the cameras are limited by darkness, and as a result of the Columbia accident NASA has for the time being limited future flights to daylight hours.

That decision will deprive the space agency of half the launches toward the orbiting International Space Station, a possible source of delays in the station's construction.

One solution may be the use of high altitude WB-57F reconnaissance planes to follow and film the shuttle during ascent with wing-mounted cameras, said Page.

"We will test the planes with the next expendable launch vehicles," he said. "It could let us launch at night again."

SPACE.WIRE