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

by Michael D. Leinbach

Once Columbia’s main engines shut down, the flight computer commanded pyrotechnic charges to fire to jettison the external fuel tank. Astronaut Mike Anderson triggered cameras on the shuttle’s belly to take photos of the tank as the shuttle pulsed its maneuvering thrusters to move away. Those photos were part of the launch documentation, to note any issues that might require attention on the next missions. The crew did not notice anything unusual about the tank as it slowly drifted away from them. As usual, the tank would break up and fall into the Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii. 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. 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. Back on the ground, an array of cameras along Florida’s Space Coast had filmed Columbia on her ride uphill. The imagery analysis team at KSC began reviewing the films the afternoon after the launch. The team was frustrated to discover that one of the tracking cameras had not worked at all, and another was out of focus. What particularly caught their eye, however, was footage from o...