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

by Michael D. Leinbach

That first flight was more successful than any of us involved with the program could have hoped for. This was the first time astronauts launched on a vehicle that had not first been tested in an unmanned flight. It was the first crewed vehicle to use solid rocket boosters, and it was the first spacecraft to return to a landing on a runway. John and I were very proud of Columbia’s performance on that initial test flight.

NASA’s shuttle fleet—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour—flew 135 space missions between 1981 and 2011, carrying a total of 833 crew members.2 Space shuttles took 3.5 million pounds of cargo into orbit during the Program. This included scores of different payloads—satellites, laboratories, planetary probes, NASA’s Great Observatories (such as the Hubble Space Telescope), experiments, and space station modules.

Columbia was a little different from her sister orbiters. As the first shuttle constructed for spaceflight, her structure and internal plumbing were unique. She had a different tile pattern and air lock, and she carried instrumentation that the other orbiters lacked. She was eight thousand pounds heavier than her sister ships.

She developed a reputation at Kennedy for being the beloved black sheep of the fleet.

You know its weak spots, its strong points. They were all different. If you talk about a mission and don’t talk about the spacecraft like an eighth member of the crew, it’s like trying to tell the story of Star Trek without the Enterprise.”

The crew personally provided the adult beverages; NASA couldn’t purchase those with government funds.

The photos of the tank were never downlinked. If engineers on the ground had seen the photos, they would have immediately noticed that a large piece of foam—about the size of a carry-on suitcase—was missing from the area at the base of the left side of the strut connecting the orbiter’s nose to the tank.

Wao. With hindsight this might seem very catastrophic

The shuttle’s flexibility was ironically its biggest downfall. Unlike previous spacecraft designs for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo—in which the capsule with the astronauts was at the front end of the rocket—the space shuttle and its crew rode into orbit beside the propellant tank and the rocket boosters. This meant that ice or other debris could fall off the tank and boosters and strike the shuttle during ascent. Damage from launch debris was one of NASA’s major headaches, as there was no way to repair an orbiter’s exterior surfaces once the vehicle reached orbit.

In one of the most confounding breakdowns of the management process for STS-107, the MMT refused to issue a formal request for images.

“You don’t have enough data on the problem to warrant getting the intelligence community involved.” And yet there was no way for the team to gather more data without the intelligence imagery.

a catch 22

Lower-level engineers at KSC and at Boeing’s shuttle design offices in Huntington Beach, California, adamantly insisted that the foam impact had damaged the RCC. Some refused to certify that the vehicle was safe to come home. The MMT noted and then overruled their objections. The discussions were not even reflected in the MMT’s meeting minutes.

“Prove to me that it’s not safe to come home” demonstrates a very different management culture than does “prove to me that it is safe to come home.” The former attitude quashes arguments and debates when there is no hard evidence to support a concern. It allows people to talk themselves into a false sense of security. The latter encourages exploration of an issue and development of contingencies.

After refining the radar data, the analysts determined that a slow-moving object, about the size of a laptop computer, gradually drifted away from the shuttle. Its slow motion implied that it was probably not a piece of space junk or a meteor. Further tests showed that the radar properties of the object were a close match for a piece of RCC panel—possibly part of the wing’s leading edge. It appeared to separate from the shuttle after several thruster firings that changed Columbia’s orbital orientation.

The added mass of the Spacehab module meant that STS-107 would be the heaviest shuttle ever to return from orbit. That would make her reentry hotter than usual, even if everything went as planned.

Everything was stacked against Columbia

Pressure to keep on schedule had combined with a complacency brought about by so many past mission successes. The same conditions were present for Apollo 1 and Challenger. And once again, a crew would pay with their lives.

His repeated calls of “Columbia, Houston, comm check” went unanswered. Long periods of silence ticked by between his calls.

these are the words that still haunt me

Columbia had come apart in a “catastrophic event” 181,000 feet above Corsicana and Palestine, southeast of Dallas, traveling more than 11,000 mph. As the vehicle broke up, lighter pieces decelerated quickly and floated to earth. Denser objects like the shuttle’s main engines continued along a ballistic path at supersonic speed until they impacted the ground farther east.

Each one of the tens of thousands of pieces of debris produced its own sonic boom as it passed overhead.

Despite the clear blue sky above, the radar image showed a wide swath of something in the air along a northwest to southeast track from Nacogdoches, Texas, through Hemphill and heading on toward Leesville, Louisiana. The largest concentration of radar returns was centered over Sabine County, and the cloud appeared to be slowly drifting north and east. He realized that the weather radar was picking up the debris from Columbia that was still falling to the ground.

While O’Keefe was out of the conference room, Roy Bridges asked me, “Mike, what do you think happened?” I replied, “The only thing I can think of is the foam strike.” I called for someone to bring us copies of the photos of the launch debris hitting the shuttle’s wing.

Wao with hindsight it was really clear. Almost no doubt from the beginning

Someone said, “Okay. Let’s file this away for now. Don’t jump to any conclusions.”

Important to have a clear mind

At that time, Hamilton was the only law officer in Sabine County who had a digital camera. After visiting the first six or seven scenes, Hamilton had already filled two data disks with photos.

Wao how fast things are moving in photography. 15 years ago and there was only one digital camera and no smartphones.

As quintessential type A personalities, astronauts are biased toward acting to bring a situation under control. Patience can be a tough virtue for them to exercise, especially when the lives of their colleagues are on the line.

During the six-hour drive southwest to Barksdale, Wells teleconferenced with Castleman, FEMA headquarters in Washington, NASA headquarters, and Tom Ridge, the head of the new Department of Homeland Security. Priorities for NASA and FEMA were clear. First and foremost, they were to ensure public safety. Recovery of the crew’s remains was the next priority, followed by supporting NASA’s accident investigation.

Brother Fred learned that Columbia’s commander Rick Husband had recited Joshua 1:9 to his crew as they suited up before their flight: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Brother Fred incorporated that verse into all of his services in the field.

The strength of the astronauts’ religious convictions also surprised Lane at first. Then he realized that if these people “strap a million pounds of dynamite to their butts for someone else to light, they’d better have mighty deep faith.”

President Bush addressed the nation from the White House Cabinet Room at 2:04 p.m. Eastern Time. “My fellow Americans,” he began, “this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At nine a.m., Mission Control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia. A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas … “The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors.”

“Figure out who’s in charge by observing the scene. Then go up to that person and say, ‘What three things are biting you on the ass?’ And then you make it your goal to fix those three things. Then you’re part of the team.”

accepted his invitation, but later regretted it. I wish to God I had stayed down in the cold and noisy cargo hold with my people. A good leader should know better, I chided myself.

By this point, people who had been running on adrenaline all day were burning out. At about one o’clock in the morning—seventeen hours after the accident—I told everyone to go to their rooms and get some sleep. We would reconvene in five hours.

Fortunately, experienced leaders knew chaos was part of the normal process in the hours following a catastrophe. It would take forty-eight to seventy-two hours to gather the appropriate situational awareness, sort out priorities, and begin taking control of the situation. Until then, things would be messy—and probably get messier.

The nonstop activity since the accident caused people’s perception of time to become fluid and deceptive.

At one point, Stanford told someone that he had been on duty for seventy-two hours straight. He was surprised to learn that it was still less than twenty-four hours after the accident.

going on. A few minutes later, King was told, “You’re in charge of the search and recovery. FEMA’s there to support you.” Almost immediately afterward, one of the FEMA men came to King and asked, “What can we do to help?” No egos were involved—it was just that the roles needed to be clarified and confirmed. Multiple leaders simply could not all have the final decision-making authority.

Grid searching is a basic skill for forestry workers—a methodical, disciplined way to search an area for still-smoldering pockets of embers that might rekindle into flame. Law enforcement also uses the technique to search crime scenes for evidence or to cover a large area when looking for a missing person.

Astronaut John Grunsfeld returned to the Hemphill command center to help plan searches for the crew. He mentioned to Olen Bean of the Texas Forest Service that his laptop lacked mapping software, so Bean offered to let him use a copy of a digital street atlas. Grunsfeld tried several times without success to get the program to load on his computer. Finally, Bean pointed out that Grunsfeld was hitting the “X” (close box) instead of “Yes” to complete the installation. Grunsfeld, a man with a PhD in physics—someone who had repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope on two separate missions—smacked his head and said, “Man! I’m so stupid!” It lightened the mood. But it also bore witness to the enormous pressure he was feeling.

firefighter Jan Amen told a friend, “Never in my wildest dreams did I picture myself scouring the school yard for pieces of a spacecraft.”

“Are you part of the army?” Mango said that he worked for NASA. The grandfather appeared stunned. “You mean there’s a NASA guy in our backyard?” The mother then said something that stuck with Mango for the rest of his NASA career. It was a statement, not a question: “We are going to fly again, right?”

Sniff. But yes that is the spirit