Jonathan H. Ward's Blog, page 6
February 2, 2017
The Sky Is Falling
February 1, 8:05 a.m. CST
Deep East Texas
While the team at Kennedy Space Center wondered where Columbia was, the citizens of Deep East Texas wondered what terrible disaster was being visited upon them from the sky. It was the supreme moment of parallel confusion.
People were waking up to a chilly, foggy Saturday morning. Starting just after 8 a.m., the ground began shaking and the air was filled with a sound that was impossible to describe. A continuous cavalcade of staccato booms and blast...
February 1, 2017
Landing Day—Silence and Shock
(The following is the Preface to our upcoming book, “Bringing Columbia Home,” which will be published late this year.)
Kennedy Space Center
February 1, 2003
Twin sonic booms in rapid succession, one from the space shuttle’s nose and one from its vertical tail, were always the fanfare announcing the mighty spacecraft’s arrival. The timing of the phenomenon was determined by the immutable laws of physics. Three minutes and fifteen seconds before landing, as the shuttle glided toward the Kennedy...
January 30, 2017
Getting Ready for Reentry
The final meeting of the Mission Management Team (MMT) during Columbia‘s STS-107 mission was held on Thursday, January 30, 2003.
Everything seemed to be going well. The biggest headache was the continued degradation of the Water Pump Package, which was a crucial part of the heat exchanger on board the shuttle. A breakdown in the Spacehab module’s dehumidifier early in the flight, combined with the effects of the balky heat exchanger running, required the crew to actively manage the environmen...
January 28, 2017
Remembering
“It is today that we remember and honor the crews of Apollo 1 and Challenger. They made the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives in service to their country and for all mankind. Their dedication and devotion to the exploration of space was an inspiration to each of us and still motivates people around the world to achieve great things in service to others. As we orbit the Earth, we will join the entire NASA family for a moment of silence in their memory. Our thoughts and prayers go to their...
January 23, 2017
The Mission
As I write this entry the crew ofColumbiawas beginning their 6thday in orbit 14 years ago. Those of us involved in the series of Mission Management Team meetings were aware of the foam strike on the Orbiter. Most people just casually following the mission probably didn’t know.
The astronauts on board were conducting the mission plan as written, totally unaware of the strike. It would be on Day 7 that a brief summary of the event was sent to them, ending in “… absolutely no concern for entry.”...
January 20, 2017
The Foam Strike
Columbia‘s launch on January 16, 2003 appeared to be smooth and uneventful. The shuttle reached orbit as planned and the crew immediately began preparing to operate the experiments in the Spacehab double module in the payload bay.
Later in the day, the imagery analysis team began analyzing the films from the tracking cameras that monitoredColumbia‘s ascent. One of the cameras had not worked at all, and another was out of focus. However, another camera showed what appeared to be a large chunk...
January 16, 2017
Launch Day
The launch day for Columbia and the STS-107 mission finally arrived on January 16, 2003. The mission had been rescheduled 13 times since NASA first announced it in 1999.
Commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, payload commander Mike Anderson, mission specialists Kalpana “KC” Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Dave Brown, and payload specialist Ilan Ramon had been training together as a team for several years. The mission delays, while frustrating, gave them time to bond even more closely as a fam...
January 15, 2017
Launch Countdown
Why was a Shuttle launch countdown three days long? The answer to this question hasroots back to the ‘elders’.
Those of us that were part of the final years of the thirty-year operational life of the Space Transportation System inherited some truly thoughtful processes from those who came before us. Some processes were born as early as the Mercury program, nourished through the Gemini and Apollo days, and adapted to the Shuttle needs.
In architectural design, it’s called “form follows functio...
January 13, 2017
Getting Ready for Launch Countdown
Fourteenyears ago this week we were doing our final preparations on Columbia and the ground systems, getting ready to enter launch countdown (LCD).
With launch scheduled for January 16, the 3-day countdown was to begin Monday, 1/13. After dusting off vehicle and ground systems (and ourselves!) last week following our 9-day holiday period vacation, we were conducting several final tests that weren’t in the launch procedure but needed to be done as close to it as possible. On the schedule was i...
January 9, 2017
Security and STS-107
Having contingency plans for many of the more troublesome possible events during launch was a hallmark of the Shuttle program. Developing these plans and training for them was ‘business as usual’ for us. So was hoping they would never be needed.
On-Pad abort (shutdown of the main engines just prior to T-0), the slidewire emergency egress system, Return to Launch Site Abort, Transoceanic Abort Landing, are four we had. Do you know which one was actually used?
One of the major changes in my job...
