Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

by Michael D. Leinbach

In late 2003, program managers and leaders at the NASA centers began identifying the changes to hardware, processes, and practices to address the findings in the CAIB report, as well as other findings that came to light during the investigation. Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center reeducated the workforce in the proper procedures for applying foam to the external tank. Johnson Space Center engineers developed hardware and techniques for inspecting and repairing a shuttle in orbit. The first several days of a mission would now include a complete inspection of the shuttle’s heatshield, both by the crew on the shuttle and by astronauts inside the International Space Station, who would photograph the shuttle as it approached. We overhauled our inspection and processing procedures at Kennedy and significantly improved the tracking camera coverage for future launches. Redesigned flight plans allowed launching only in daylight hours, to allow cameras to monitor the ascent phase of the mission. Critical phases of reentry could fly only over unpopulated areas. Mission Management Teams would be required to meet every day the shuttle was in orbit, no matter how well things seemed to be going. Roy Bridges established NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center at Langley Research Center, providing a resource any engineer could call with a concern that they believed needed to be examined.