Virginia Sen. George Allen said Wednesday that crew members of Columbia were concerned about possible damage to the left wing of the shuttle and they took photos of it, according to a TV news report.

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Allen said mission Spc. David Brown, (pictured, right) who was a Virginia native, sent e-mail messages to his brother, Doug, during the mission.

In those e-mails, Brown said that the crew took pictures of the left wing because they were concerned about it, Allen said.

The senator was only repeating information he received from Doug Brown, said his spokeswoman, Carrie Cantrell.

There was no phone listing for Doug Brown’s home in Arlington and he could not be reached for comment today

NASA officials said the crew would probably not have been able take photos of the damaged part of the wing.

A patch of foam insulation breaking off from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch and striking tiles on the underside of the left wing is being studied as the possible cause of Columbia's destruction Saturday, which left all seven astronauts dead.

Meanwhile, the father of Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut onboard Columbia, said NASA has told him the crew may have known something was wrong with the shuttle for over a minute before disintegrating, Local 6 News reported.

"It's very difficult, as if I'm with them and I try to imagine what they went through," Eliezer Wolferman told a newspaper. "One second is like 20 years. I can't explain it. It's hell, hell in the sky."

Ramon's brother also reportedly said that NASA officials think that the astronauts were killed as soon as the shuttle broke up, according to a newspaper report. "We apparently will never know if they suffered," he said.

NASA is now examining what one expert said could be "thousands of data points" obscured in the last 32 seconds before the Columbia disaster.

1994 Report Warned Of Shuttle Tile Danger

NASA was reportedly warned nine years ago that the space shuttle could experience catastrophic failure if debris were to hit the underside of its wings during liftoff.

That's the very scenario that may have brought down Columbia.

NASA struggled for years in trying to ensure that the tiles were firmly attached to the shuttle, Paul Fischbeck, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in his analysis.

Fischbeck said that NASA engineers "took a lot of our advice to heart" and made changes to lower the risk of debris hitting the tiles during launch. But the problems were never completely solved, he said.

A patch of foam insulation breaking off from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch and striking tiles on the underside of the left wing is being studied as the possible cause of Columbia's destruction Saturday, which left all seven astronauts dead.

"There are very important tiles under there. If you lose the tiles on those stretches ... it can cause the shuttle to be lost," Fischbeck said.

A NASA spokesman said that nobody was available to comment on the report.

Meanwhile, the search for bits and pieces of the shattered Columbia was expanded westward to California and Arizona, where teams are checking reports of debris. That material could provide clues to the earliest stages of Columbia's disintegration.

Investigators also are examining military photos taken from an Apache helicopter of Columbia's final fiery descent.

Fischbeck and his colleagues made an initial report to NASA on their findings in 1990, and they later published a follow-up paper on the research in 1994.

They conducted a risk analysis of the shuttle's thermal protection tile system and found that the spacecraft was highly vulnerable to tiles being knocked off or broken by insulation falling from the fuel tank and from other debris.

In a follow up to the report, Fischbeck said he studied debris strikes during the first 50 shuttle launches and concluded that about 25 thermal tiles per flight sustained damage of at least one inch.

The analysis found that the most vulnerable parts of the shuttle were the undersides of the wings close to the fuselage and right under the crew compartment.

NASA experts said that data from Columbia shows a sudden temperature rise — a marker for failed tiles — in the left wheel well, an area Fischbeck's report said was a critical risk.

Fischbeck's report said that a key problem faced by NASA was training technicians to glue tiles on the hull of the space shuttle and then test the strength of the bonding.

An adhesive used for the tiles hardened more quickly if it was wet, and the report said NASA found one technician helping the process along by spitting into the glue. The wetting, however, compromised the bond.

To find loose tiles, workers conducted a pull test, using a special machine, but the study found this technique missed some problems. The best method was a "wiggle test" that only experienced technicians learned to do, the study found.

Loose tiles are more easily knocked off by falling debris.

Investigators searching for clues to Columbia's loss are focusing on a 2 1/2-pound, 20-inch chunk of foam insulation that fell from the shuttle's external tank moments after liftoff and stuck the underside of the wing, possibly damaging the tiles. The shuttle was traveling at 2 1/2 times the speed of sound at the time, or just over 1,900 mph.

Michael Kostelnik, NASA's deputy associate administrator for spaceflight, said that foam insulation has peeled off during earlier launches, but none was the size of the chunk that went sailing off Columbia's fuel tank.

Fischbeck said NASA has made improvements in protecting and maintaining the tile system since his study. Foam insulation on the fuel tank has been changed and there are stricter limits on the amount of ice allowed on the fuel tank before launch.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.