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

by Michael D. Leinbach

Standard procedure called for the tank photos to be transmitted to the ground at the end of the first day’s operations. However, the Columbia crew had a busy day ahead of them configuring the experiments aboard Spacehab. The photos of the tank were never downlinked.

Human error

Ann Micklos, who represented her thermal protection system team during the video review recalled that “people’s jaws dropped. You could have heard a pin drop in that room when we saw the foam strike.

The shuttles had aluminum skin, and when “naked,” they looked remarkably similar to conventional aircraft.

Atlantis’s STS-27 mission, where hundreds of the orbiter’s tiles were heavily damaged during launch, and missing tile created a hole in the heatshield that nearly burned through on reentry. Atlantis held the distinction of being the most heavily damaged spaceship ever to survive reentry.2 And on STS-112, just four months before Columbia’s

Mid-level technical experts in the intelligence community said they would be happy to help. They just needed a formal request from NASA. In one of the most confounding breakdowns of the management process for STS-107, the MMT refused to issue a formal request for images.

Trapped in a Catch-22, those who desperately wanted the additional information felt incredibly frustrated at the bureaucratic logjam. 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.

Mission Control sent an email to Rick Husband and

Even so, the arm would not have been able to reach underneath the orbiter to look for damage there. The only other way the crew could have checked the wing for damage would have been to take a space walk. That would have required a two-day interruption

Streaking across the predawn sky at 15,500 mph and at an altitude of 230,000 feet, Columbia was a fast-moving, breathtakingly bright “star” followed by a beautiful glowing pink and magenta trail of ionized oxygen. Transiting the sky in only a minute, the shuttle blazed off to the southeast over Nevada and Utah. Hanley got back in his car and raced on toward Dryden. He had twenty minutes to get to his work trailer so that he could watch the NASA-TV feed of Columbia’s landing in Florida. He did not know that he was among the last of the NASA family to see Columbia in flight.

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.

He said a silent prayer, took a deep breath, and instructed the ground control officer in Mission Control: “Lock the doors.” He commanded the flight controllers to preserve all their notes and the data on their computers. They were told not to make any outgoing calls. At Kennedy’s runway,

He found a quiet spot where he could call his father. He cried with him on the phone until he regained his composure.

O’Keefe left the meeting and phoned President George W. Bush, who was at Camp David. Bush’s first question was, “Where are the families?” O’Keefe was moved that the president’s primary concern was to ensure that the families were being cared for. Bush then requested to speak with the families later that morning to express his personal remorse and to offer condolences

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. O’Keefe returned, and I passed around the photos. I said, “We don’t know if this is it, but there’s nothing else about this flight that stands out. This is the only thing I can think of as a potential problem.” Everyone stared at the photos.

done—telling the families that their loved ones weren’t coming home. When he felt he had enough information, he and Ross joined the families in the crew conference room. Cabana explained to them that it was unlikely that any of Columbia’s crew could have survived the accident.

About three hours after the accident, a call had come in regarding a sighting of something unusual on Beckcom Road, a few miles southwest of town. A jogger had seen what he first thought to be the body of a deer or wild boar near the roadway. Kelly and Lane rode with Sheriff Maddox to the site. They met Tommy Scales from the Department of Public Safety, who had just come from another debris scene nearby. They encountered what was clearly the remains of one of Columbia’s crew.

Maddox radioed John “Squeaky” Starr, the local funeral director, to come to the scene to assist in the recovery. Kelly also requested that a clergyman come to the site to perform a service before the remains were moved or photographed. While they were waiting, another state trooper covered the crew member with his raincoat.

a news helicopter full of reporters flew over the scene, trying to get video of the recovery on the ground. They were low enough, and their motion deliberate enough, that it was clear to the people on the ground that the pilot was trying to use the helicopter’s rotor wash to blow the raincoat from the crew member’s remains. Lane and two troopers stood on the corners of the coat to keep it in place. One of the troopers used “an emphatic gesture” to make it clear to the pilot that the helicopter had to leave the area immediately. Lane later said, “I don’t know if a helicopter has ever been shot down by a DPS pistol, but they were very close to that happening.”

Making the first two crew remains recoveries in the space of a few hours set the tone and protocol for subsequent recoveries. From that point forward, whenever possible crew remains were located, the FBI would be called to the scene immediately. An astronaut accompanied Lane and his team to investigate every sighting,

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.

FEMA’s Emergency Operations Vehicle arrived in Lufkin from Denton, Texas, late in the afternoon. FEMA parked the eighty-two-foot-long tractor trailer in the lot adjacent to the Civic Center. A section of the trailer expanded sideways, forming a work area that accommodated a twenty-five-person FEMA response team. Equipped with electrical generators, satellite radio transceivers, computers, desks, file servers, printers, and copiers, it was FEMA’s self-contained command center.

ATVs. Kelly and his team saw the astronaut’s body lying on a small mound in a clearing almost one mile from the closest roadway. The beauty of the surroundings belied the tragic nature of the situation. Kelly and Lane sat with the fallen astronaut for almost ninety minutes

Much to the relief of the incident commanders, the local populace was circumspect about sightings of human remains on their property—calling the command center, not the press. To this day, the people of Sabine County will not discuss with outsiders what they saw of the remains of Columbia’s crew.

Forest Service personnel, looking for debris after hearing loud sonic booms the previous day, had driven past several water-filled mudholes in the remote forest. At first glance, the holes were not particularly noteworthy. But then the searchers saw that mud was splattered forty-five feet high on the trunks of trees surrounding several of the holes. The holes were impact craters.

The number one priority item for the debris search was the shuttle’s Orbiter Experiment system (OEX) recorder. The OEX system monitored and recorded hundreds of channels of data during the shuttle’s ascent and reentry. It was installed on Columbia to help characterize various physical loads on the ship, ranging from stresses and strains to temperatures and acoustics. It was the closest thing on the shuttle to the flight-data

carefully extracted from the deep woods. The ground searches located two more of Columbia’s crew that day. Both were found in the Housen Hollow area between Farm to Market Road (FM) 2024 and FM 184.3 The first call came in about three-thirty in the afternoon. The remains of the second astronaut were found nearby, while the recovery team was still in the area.4

He worried about keeping the dog away from the crew members’ remains, but this turned out not to be an issue. The dog stopped and lay down near Maddox while Brother Fred Raney read his words beside the fallen astronaut. To Maddox’s surprise, the dog covered its head with its paws while Brother Fred led the prayer service. At the end of the service, the dog led the team out to the road. Then the dog went back into the woods and was not seen again. It did not belong to the property owner. No one knew whose it was or where it came from.5

Inquiries about NASA, FEMA, or the US Forest Service assuming control were similarly dismissed. None of the forty-six federal, state, and local agencies on the scene saw any need to step in and take over an operation that was obviously working well.8 The Hemphill team was a victim of its own success at this point of the search.

Astronaut Dom Gorie would escort the remains to Barksdale. Wetherbee

“Eight, Eight, Eight Rule” in recoveries: “Eight days from now, eight months from now, and eight years from now, we must be able to live with the consequences of the decisions that we will make in the field. Every decision must be based on our highest judgment using our greatest professionalism and human values.”

The local volunteer firemen were on average much older than many of the people arriving from outside the area. However, they knew the deep woods intimately, and they were much better prepared for the conditions. Growing up in the area taught them many tricks for dealing with the undergrowth. Marsha Cooper wrapped one of her duty shirts in duct

recovered and where.20 By

February 4, it appeared that at least some portion of each Columbia crew member’s remains had been recovered. Dr. Philip Stepaniak and his medical team in the temporary morgue at Barksdale received, studied, and prepared the remains of Columbia’s astronauts that had been gathered so far. The medical team and the recovery leaders in Lufkin debated about the appropriate time to transfer the crew’s remains to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Dover Air Force Base. On one hand, consideration for the grieving family members argued in favor of waiting to move all seven transfer cases at one time.

One of the National Guard units, however, located one of the missing astronauts in mid-morning near Toledo Bend Reservoir and Farm Road 2928. Everyone was elated that another crew member had been found after nine days of such intense effort. However, since this sighting was so close to the reservoir, Cohrs was worried that the last crew member might be in the

In the mid-morning, one of the Forest Service teams called to report they had located the last crew member, near Housen Bayou between Route 87 and the Yellowpine Lookout. This was in the vicinity of where the FBI and Greg Cohrs had suspected something significant would be found.

Successfully recovering the crew had seemed so improbable ten days ago, considering that Columbia had disintegrated two hundred thousand feet high and traveling in excess of 12,000 miles per hour. His careful planning, his insistence on maintaining a disciplined and methodical search, his determination, and his faith had all paid off. All of the crew members’ remains were recovered along a fourteen-mile-long path within the one-mile-wide search area.

NASA publicly released the video on February 28. The tape showed Columbia’s crew being happy, acting professionally, and enjoying the ride. They were passing the video camera around, smiling at one another, and remarking on the sight of the glowing plasma surrounding the orbiter. They were obviously unaware that anything was wrong with their ship.

Almost from the moment the ship was visible over California, her plasma trail unexpectedly brightened on occasion—apparently as tiles peeled off from the ship.

Observers at the Starfire Optical Range at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico, had obtained a puzzling image as Columbia flew past, about three minutes before the shuttle disintegrated. This disturbing photo showed apparent irregularities in the flow across the leading edge of Columbia’s left wing and something—possibly debris or vaporized metal—trailing out behind the left wing. The pilot of an Apache helicopter,

Seeing unusual streaks in the sky ahead of him, the pilot trained his targeting cameras on the smoke trails. Realizing later that he had witnessed Columbia’s disintegration, he personally drove the tape to Barksdale and played it for Dave Whittle and our leadership team. The tape itself was classified, but he allowed us to record portions of the video showing the breakup. With the detailed knowledge of the helicopter’s position at the time of the accident and the altitude and azimuth

In another stunning development, we learned the “Flight Day 2” object detected by the Air Force was real. Something that was about the size of a laptop computer—with the radar characteristics of a piece of reinforced carbon-carbon—had drifted away from the shuttle on the second day of the mission. It added to the mystery of what had happened to Columbia.40 Material arriving at Barksdale

Only minor property damage to a few structures was reported. Had the shuttle broken up only a minute or two earlier, its debris would have rained down over Dallas, and the situation might have been very different.45

Data showed Columbia’s steering thrusters were firing continuously—apparently trying to counteract drag on the left wing—just before the orbiter broke up. Roe

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group, with membership from nine federal agencies, used IMTs to manage responses to large-scale fires and other major natural and man-made disasters. But those IMTs were not just professional firefighters. Their support structure included leaders and members from federal, state, and local agencies who dealt with an amazing array of “all-hazard” incidents. In addition to containing large-scale wildfires, they provided assistance in such diverse situations as search and rescue following the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, containing the Exotic Newcastle Disease (avian flu) outbreak in Nevada in 2003, and disaster recovery in areas devastated by hurricanes and floods.

Stanford and Rounsaville pointed out the US Forest Service IMTs deployed as completely self-contained units and could be on-site within a matter of days. They brought their own tents, equipment, clothing, food, portable toilets, shower facilities, transportation, cooks, accountants, command organization—everything they needed to set up operations wherever their presence was required. IMTs normally utilized elite Type 1 “hotshot” crews and Type 2 fire crews to respond to complex incidents.3 Each crew was staffed by twenty able-bodied, disciplined, and motivated men and women who were already trained in the practice of grid searching in remote areas. Hundreds of such crews existed across the country,

United States consisted of Native American firefighters, representing nearly every Native American Tribe and Nation in those states. In many areas or reservations, it can be hard for young adults to find jobs. Working on a fire crew both provides good temporary income for able-bodied persons and also helps protect tribal lands during fire season. The presence of people representing so many different tribes

He had been one of the last seven people to see Columbia’s crew on January 16, when he helped strap them into their seats in the orbiter before launch. Now, at a spot near a magnolia tree with a stream running beside it, he saw a cross and flowers marking where remains of one of Columbia’s crew members had come to Earth. “I just couldn’t go any further,” he said. “I stayed there for about forty minutes. That’s where I put them to rest. And then I went on and did my job.” One of the

The immediately recognizable piece of the shuttle evoked strong reactions in the NASA personnel. John Grunsfeld saw it on a visit to the Hemphill area. “He was obviously sobered by being in the presence of the item,” Greg Cohrs said. “Then he told me that he had been on the last flight of Columbia.”29 On February 21, NASA’s Debbie

Awtonomow looked in and immediately saw the landing gear. The sight of the piece of the once-proud shuttle, now horribly wrecked and embedded with grass and mud, proved too much for her. She walked over to the ramp beside the truck and vomited. She broke into tears and cried for nearly an hour. “In the

were also still uncovering material on their properties. On February 13, a man plowing his field in Littlefield, Texas, north of Lubbock, found a small piece of tile. The “Littlefield Tile” turned out to be the westernmost piece of Columbia recovered—nearly three hundred miles farther west than any other item of debris—despite searches in every state between Texas and the Pacific Ocean. Columbia shed this piece of tile from its left wing about one minute before the vehicle completely disintegrated.