Columbia’s Reconstructed Debris Tells a Compelling Story

Throughout February, March, and April of 2003, truckloads of Columbia’s debris retrieved in East Texas arrived at the reconstruction hangar at Kennedy Space Center. In the first month or so, several truckloads arrived every week. By April, those deliveries were beginning to tail off as searchers completed clearing the debris field.

Workers in the field knew that NASA was conducting important analyses on the material they’d found and shipped to KSC, but they had no concept of the scope of the...