Today’s offering in our reflection on the fifteenth anniversary of the STS-107 accident is a music video tribute to the crew.
A Tribute to the Crew of Columbia: Sixteen Minutes from Home: Set to an original song by Kyle Breese, this video helps us reconcile our grief at the loss of the crew of STS-107 with the knowledge that the crew was doing what they loved best. We see footage of the crew enjoying themselves during their flight preparations and mission. At the end, the song reassures us that “at last you are truly home.”
While there are no graphic images of the accident in the video, please be aware that the content may provoke strong emotions.
Please feel free to share this video, but note that it is intended for noncommercial use only.
Tomorrow: Bringing Columbia Home: Recovery, Reconstruction, and Return to Flight
This month I assembled three videos to memorialize the crew of STS-107 and to recognize the sacrifices of those who fought so hard to bring Columbia home and prepare the shuttle fleet to fly again. These videos were first shown publicly at the “Columbia: Lessons and Legends of Recovery” event at Kennedy Space Center on January 26.
I understand that versions of these videos may be officially shared later on, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to see them this week as we reflect on the crew of STS-107 on this 15th anniversary of their loss.
I’ll share the videos one at a time for the next three days. Although I hope the videos stand on their own, I’ll give a little preview of what you’ll see.
The videos are not subtitled, so you’ll need to have your sound turned on when you watch them. Also, please bear in mind that making these videos was the first time I’d ever used iMovie, and I am far from being a professional video editor!
The crew of STS-107 discuss their excitement about the upcoming mission. Launch Director Mike Leinbach wishes the crew “Good luck and Godspeed,” and Columbia launches into a beautiful blue sky. We see some highlights of the crew’s on-orbit activities. The six-minute video fades to black with Mission Control’s calls to the crew during re-entry.
Tomorrow: A Tribute to the Crew of Columbia Mission STS-107.
Shortly after the accident, during the third week in February 2003, a few of us contemplated if a rescue mission of Columbia’s crew could have been conducted. If it could, what were the chances of success?
Under the guidance of Shuttle Program managers we were asked to quietly study it. We were to conduct our studies in part to satisfy our own curiosity and in part knowing the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) would no doubt ask us one day. The Flight Directors at Johnson Space Center (JSC) would do the on-orbit assessment, and I would do the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) operations assessment. The two would combine to answer the unfriendly—but necessary—question.
My part concluded that from a pure timing perspective, a rescue was theoretically possible. The result from JSC was the same: theoretically possible. But both required unrealistic assumptions and actions that were not consistent with the mission being flown, or usual program priorities or objectives.
Rescue would have involved having us launch Atlantis—next in line to fly—as soon as possible, rendezvous with Columbia, transfer the astronauts via some sort of tether to Atlantis, and come home. The crew of seven from Columbia would be aboard Atlantis with her rescue crew of four. Four of the crew members would have to ride home strapped to the deck; there were only seven seats on the orbiter. Columbia herself would then be guided to a ditching in the ocean.
At the time of the accident, Atlantis was almost ready to roll out of the Orbiter Processing Facility to the VAB. A full-court press to expedite that and get to the launch pad would be required. The Pad “flow” would be truncated to only those tasks required, the rest omitted to save time. Things like the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test and cryogenic loading simulation would be eliminated. Other required tasks would be done three shifts per day, seven days per week. Meanwhile, the rescue scenario flight plan would be developed at JSC.
Assuming no significant glitches, launch could have been as early as February 11. This also assumed no significant processing or launch delays occurred, including weather. That also assumed that Atlantis would not have her remote manipulator arm installed, which was almost certainly needed for a rescue mission. Installing the arm would have pushed the earliest launch date to February 13.
If everything went according to plan—and that was a BIG if—the rescue would have happened two days before Columbia‘s consumables ran out. Columbia would have been in orbit for almost a full month by then, two weeks longer than any previous Shuttle mission.
The key to the entire study was that consumables on board Columbia needed to preserved as much as possible, extending Columbia’s time on orbit awaiting Atlantis’ arrival. Food, water, etc. all needed to be stretched to the max. The limiting commodity however were the lithium hydroxide (LiOH) canisters needed to scrub carbon dioxide from the cabin air. Not food, not water, not power, but the ability to provide breathable air for Columbia’s crew.
The assumption made for the study was that we needed to put the crew on alert for extending LiOH no later than Day 4 of the mission. The crew would have had to go into a very low activity mode to keep their respiration as low as possible. This would have had the effect of terminating the mission’s objectives, effectively ending the reason for the mission. To do this would have been one of the unrealistic moves required. AND, to even get to this posture would have required either proof that the Orbiter was fatally damaged by that day, or assuming so. That was another unrealistic assumption, since the request for additional imagery didn’t occur until Day 6 of the mission, by which time it would already have been too late to conserve the consumables.
But when the two studies were combined, we saw that it would have been technically possible to rescue the crew. That’s the cold, data-driven answer. The truth is that the assumptions I mentioned above, and a few others, would have required extraordinary efforts in both ground and mission operations AND management decision making while we were lacking definitive damage information. All this would have been far outside the normal Shuttle practices at the time.
It should also be noted that the decision to actually launch the rescue mission would have been an extraordinary thing in and of itself. Would we commit a crew of four on Atlantis to rescue Columbia’s, crew possibly facing the same damaging foam loss during its launch? A tough decision to say the least, bigger than NASA alone could make. I believe the President would have had a role in that decision.
But it never got to the point that we’d find out.
No rescue mission was ever contemplated during Columbia’s time on orbit, let alone one early enough to give it a fighting chance of success. We just didn’t have the evidence to support making such a decision, and there was no realistic way in which we could have had that evidence by the time that decision needed to be made.
The CAIB asked us about the scenario in early May 2003. Admiral Gehman, a superior leader, intentionally waited to ask the question until some of the raw emotions had time to subside a little.
When we saw the analyses, there was no grumbling, but there was grief. We couldn’t save the ship. Columbia was doomed, no matter what. Maybe we could have saved the crew. But there were so many what-ifs and assumptions, so many things that had to go completely differently from the very first hours of the mission. Would it have been successful? I don’t know. But we never even had the chance to try.
As much as it hurt people to think about the remote possibility of saving Columbia’s crew, the study helped prompt discussions on how to save a future crew of a damaged shuttle. The studies led to the safe-haven scenario, in which damaged Orbiters could dock at the International Space Station to enable the crews to wait there for a later rescue mission.
KSC and JSC used the Columbia rescue scenario to design a one-time rescue mission that could back up the final Hubble servicing mission. After the successful completion of STS-121 in July 2006, proving that we’d finally solved the foam-shedding problem, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin formally approved the Hubble servicing mission.
On May 11, 2009 Atlantis was poised for launch to the Hubble from Pad 39A at Kennedy. Standing on Pad 39B two miles to the north was Endeavour, ready to go into orbit if there were any problems with Atlantis. For the first and only time, NASA had two shuttles in launch countdown simultaneously. We were ready to launch Endeavour one day after Atlantis if necessary. Tremendous dedication and work went into getting us to this dual launch posture. Fortunately—like many other things in the space business—this contingency capability was assured but never needed.
Atlantis’s flight went flawlessly, so the rescue mission never flew. Atlantis’ crew successfully prolonged Hubble’s life and upgraded its instrument package.
In a roundabout way, Columbia had once again contributed to the advancement of scientific discovery.
On Pad A (foreground), Atlantis awaits launch for the STS-125 Hubble servicing mission, while Endeavour (STS-400) sits on Pad B for a possible rescue mission. (NASA/Troy Cryder)
While the team at Kennedy Space Center wondered where Columbia was, the citizens of Deep East Texas wondered what terrible disaster was being visited upon them from the sky. It was the supreme moment of parallel confusion.
People were waking up to a chilly, foggy Saturday morning. Starting just after 8 a.m., the ground began shaking and the air was filled with a sound that was impossible to describe. A continuous cavalcade of staccato booms and blasts lasted several minutes. Houses shook to their foundations. Windows vibrated so violently that people thought they would break.
In Sabine County, US Forest Service law officer Doug Hamilton was convinced it was Judgment Day. He opened the front door of his house, prepared to meet Jesus.
Less than a year and a half after the attacks of September 11, 2001, timber sale forester Greg Cohrs wondered if a terrorist nuclear blast had destroyed Houston or New Orleans.
In the small town of Hemphill, near the border with Louisiana, children and their parents were gathered in the barn of the youth arena for the first-day weigh-in for the county’s livestock show. The open-sided building began to shudder and shake as the sound of “sonic booms times one thousand” tore the air. Elementary school teacher Sunny Whittington ran outside and saw dozens of smoke trails—some corkscrewing across the sky, others continuing straight. Her husband speculated that two planes has collided above the town.
Some people heard sounds like helicopter blades, as pieces of metal whirled through the air and hit the ground around them. Dogs ran in circles, barking at the sky.
Fishermen on Toledo Bend Reservoir saw something that appeared to be the size of a compact car hit the water at high speed. The ensuing wave nearly swamped their boat.
Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox was in his office in Hemphill. The building shook so hard that he thought the roof of the jail collapsed. Almost immediately afterward, all of his phone lines lit up. One person reported a train derailment at one end of the county. Another reported a plane crash. Yet another said that the natural gas pipeline traversing the county had exploded. What the heck was going on?
Unknown to most residents at the moment, the space shuttle Columbia, traveling at Mach 12 and more than 180,000 feet in altitude, had disintegrated at about 8:00 in a “catastrophic event” over Palestine, Texas. Most citizens were not even aware that a shuttle mission was in progress that day.
For the next half hour, debris from the ship—and the remains of her crew—rained down along a path 250 miles long and 20 miles wide, stretching from near Dallas to Fort Polk, Louisiana.
The constant thunderous noise heard by the residents was caused by more than 80,000 pieces of the shuttle, each breaking the sound barrier and creating its own sonic boom as it fell to the ground.
Within half an hour, word spread about news reports that Columbia had crashed.
The town of Nacogdoches, 60 miles west of Hemphill, was in the direct path of the disintegrating shuttle. Metallic debris was coming down everywhere around the town.
Law enforcement began responding to debris sightings. Word came from NASA that the material might be contaminated with toxic fuels. The location of everything found was to be GPS recorded if possible, with items left in place for subsequent collection.
By noon that first day, the remains of a Columbia crew member had been located. Mark Kelly was the first NASA astronaut on the scene. Along with Maddox, FBI special agent Terry Lane, and Hemphill Baptist pastor “Brother Fred” Raney, they conducted a short service for the fallen astronaut. For the next two weeks, a NASA astronaut, Maddox, an FBI special agent, and Raney would be at the recovery of each of Columbia‘s crew and perform the solemn service at the “chapel in the woods.”
Meanwhile, an Incident Command Post was established at Hemphill’s volunteer fire department. Billy Ted Smith, the emergency management coordinator for the East Texas Mutual Aid Association, shared the role of incident commander with Sheriff Maddox for the Sabine, Jasper, and Newton County area.
Greg Cohrs was called in and tasked with organizing the response to the hundreds of reports that were pouring into the fire station. As the day wore on, the situation became more chaotic, as concerned citizens sidetracked the volunteers who were attempting to respond to the debris reports. Cohrs eventually restored order and began planning a more methodical response to the situation.
As evening came, Cohrs had plotted what he believed was the centerline of the debris field through Sabine County. He would organize searches for Columbia‘s crew beginning at daybreak the next morning.
Next time: Barksdale and Lufkin
The Etoile (Texas) Volunteer Fire Department responds to the first confirmed sighting of Columbia debris in their community, February 1, 2003. (Photo by Jan Amen)
(The following is the Preface to our upcoming book, “Bringing Columbia Home,” which will be published late this year.)
Kennedy Space Center
February 1, 2003
Twin sonic booms in rapid succession, one from the space shuttle’s nose and one from its vertical tail, were always the fanfare announcing the mighty spacecraft’s arrival. The timing of the phenomenon was determined by the immutable laws of physics. Three minutes and fifteen seconds before landing, as the shuttle glided toward the Kennedy Space Center, it dropped below the speed of sound and produced the double concussion. Loud and unmistakable, it could be heard up and down Florida’s Space Coast. This was our cue to start scanning the skies for a victorious space shuttle, descending toward us in the distance.
Columbia and her crew of seven astronauts were coming home from sixteen days in orbit. After six million miles circling the Earth, they had reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, crossed the California coast, and then flown over the Desert Southwest and Texas en route to Florida. These last few miles would be their victory lap in front of her astronaut crewmembers’ families and the KSC personnel who tended her on the ground.
As KSC’s launch director, I was one of the officials who would welcome Columbia home. At 9:12 this cool morning, we listened and waited for the thunderous sonic booms, like the percussion of an artillery volley. Oddly, the sounds were completely absent.
Over the loudspeaker feed from Mission Control, we heard repeated calls to the crew: “Columbia, Houston. Comm check.” Long moments of silence punctuated each call. “Columbia, Houston. UHF comm check.”
I found this confusing and alarming. I looked up at the clouds and turned to Wayne Hale, former ascent and entry flight director, and asked him, “What do you think?”
He thought for a moment and responded with a single word: “Beacons.”
That one word hit me hard. The astronauts’ orange launch and entry suits were equipped with radio beacons, in case the crew needed to bail out during a landing approach.
Hale clearly knew the crew was in trouble. He was already thinking about how to find them.
My God.
The landing countdown clock positioned between the runway and us counted down to zero. Then it began counting up. It always did this after shuttle landings, but we had never really paid attention to it, because there had always been a vehicle on the runway and that clock had become irrelevant.
The shuttle is never late. It simply cannot be.
Columbia wasn’t here. She could not have landed elsewhere along the route. She was somewhere between orbit and KSC, but we didn’t know where.
I tried to sort out my thoughts. Something was horribly wrong. An indescribably empty feeling swept over me. My position as launch director was one of knowledge and control. Now I had neither.
Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral have seen more than their share of launch disasters. A launch catastrophe is unmistakable—tremendous noise, a horrendous fireball, and smoking debris falling into the ocean. My mind flashed back to the frigid morning of January 28, 1986. I had seen Challenger lift off from pad 39B and disappear into a violent conflagration shortly afterward. I remember thinking that Challenger would emerge from the fireball, fly around, and land behind me at the Shuttle Landing Facility. But we never saw Challenger again. I recalled leaving the site with a few friends as debris and smoke trails continued to rain down into the Atlantic, just off the coast. It was a terrible thing to witness in person.
Today’s situation was completely different. Our emergency plans assumed that a landing problem would happen within sight of the runway. A failed landing attempt would be immediately obvious to everyone at the runway.
Today, there was nothing to see, nothing to hear. We had no idea what to do.
Columbia simply wasn’t here.
We all knew something awful must have happened to Columbia, but our senses could tell us nothing. The audio feed from Mission Control had gone eerily silent.
The breeze picked up. Low rippling clouds masked the sun. The quiet was broken only by a few cell phones that began ringing in the bleachers where spectators and the crew’s families were waiting. The astronauts in the ground support crew huddled briefly by the convoy command vehicle. Then they sprinted toward the family viewing stand.
I glanced over at Sean O’Keefe, NASA’s administrator. I could see he was clearly in shock. O’Keefe’s deputy, former astronaut Bill Readdy, stood at his side. Readdy looked me in the eye and asked, “Contingency?” Unable to speak, I simply nodded.
Readdy carried a notebook containing NASA’s agency-wide contingency plan for spaceflight emergencies. Ever the pragmatist, O’Keefe had ordered this plan updated within hours of his becoming administrator in late 2001. Now, barely one year later, the plan had to be activated. The procedures designated Readdy to make the official call. Readdy opened the book and told O’Keefe that he was declaring a spaceflight contingency.
Gathering my thoughts and trying to keep my emotions in check, I told the officials to meet me in my office back at the Launch Control Center, about two and one-half miles to the south. We could confer there in private and get more information about the situation.
KSC security personnel and astronaut escorts quickly led the crew’s families away from viewing stands to a bus that would take them to the privacy of the crew quarters. The other spectators—many of whom were friends of the crew or members of the crew’s extended families—were also ushered to waiting buses.
There was no announcement of what had happened, but everyone knew that it must be something dreadful. Few words were spoken. People wept and hugged each other as their initial emptiness slowly filled with grief.
In the utterly inadequate jargon of astronauts and space workers, this was going to be a bad day.
As I hustled back to my vehicle, I had no concept for just how long this horrible day would last—or how inspiring its aftermath would ultimately be.
(c) 2017 Mike Leinbach and Jonathan Ward
Tomorrow: The Sky Is Falling
The landing convoy deploys to KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility to greet a returning space shuttle (NASA/Ben Smegelsky, 2011)
The final meeting of the Mission Management Team (MMT) during Columbia‘s STS-107 mission was held on Thursday, January 30, 2003.
Everything seemed to be going well. The biggest headache was the continued degradation of the Water Pump Package, which was a crucial part of the heat exchanger on board the shuttle. A breakdown in the Spacehab module’s dehumidifier early in the flight, combined with the effects of the balky heat exchanger running, required the crew to actively manage the environmental systems in the ship to keep the cabin comfortable.
The crew, divided into a Red Team and a Blue Team, had completed most of their Spacehab work. A few final experiments were underway, while the results of others were being stowed for the return to Earth.
On the ground, the Structures Working Group was verifying that Columbia‘s weight was acceptable. At a projected “downweight” of 234,011 pounds (106,146 kg), Columbia would be the heaviest space shuttle ever to return from orbit.
Some people wondered if the extra weight—which could translate to extra heat during reentry—might overly stress the thermal protection system, if it had been damaged by the foam strike during launch. Someone even suggested tossing the Spacehab module overboard to reduce weight and heat. That drastic measure was neither possible nor taken seriously.
The MMT minutes showed that Kennedy Space Center was planning to gather the handheld cameras and external tank films as soon as Columbia landed. Someone would fly the cameras and films immediately—aboard the Shuttle Training Aircraft—to Marshall Spaceflight Center for analysis.
As on all other missions, an astronaut had been assigned to photograph Columbia‘s external tank as it separated from the ship right after the vehicle reached space. Such pictures were typically downlinked to the ground at the end of the first day’s operations. That never happened with STS-107. NASA never got to see how large the piece of foam was that struck the ship or exactly where it came from.
The handheld and ship-mounted cameras on Columbia became high-priority search targets during the recovery effort after the accident. Parts of one of the cameras that might have recorded the external tank’s separation were found on the shore of the Toledo Bend Reservoir. Neither the body of that camera nor its film were ever recovered.
The projected weather for February 1, landing day, looked good both at Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base. Since Kennedy’s weather looked favorable for at least four days, the recommendation was made not to activate the Edwards landing team for the moment.
The MMT wrapped up its meeting. They agreed that no further MMT meetings were required during the mission.
In the back rooms, some engineers were still very worried. They kicked around worst-case scenarios. What if heat penetrated the landing gear wheel well during reentry? Could one or more tires be deflated? Could there be other damage that might threaten a safe return?
Next time: Landing Day
Columbia’s “Red Team” members prepare for their sleep period in the mid-deck bunks, January 20, 2003. From left: Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, and Kalpana Chawla. The unoccupied bunk is for Ilan Ramon, who was probably taking the photograph. (NASA photo S107E05220)
As I write this entry the crew of Columbia was beginning their 6th day in orbit 14 years ago. Those of us involved in the series of Mission Management Team meetings were aware of the foam strike on the Orbiter. Most people just casually following the mission probably didn’t know.
The astronauts on board were conducting the mission plan as written, totally unaware of the strike. It would be on Day 7 that a brief summary of the event was sent to them, ending in “… absolutely no concern for entry.” Houston also uplinked a brief video of the foam strike. That was sent to them to give them a heads-up in case reporters asked a question about the foam strike during a press conference.
We held just four MMT meetings during the mission, essentially falling back into a pattern of ‘meet only if something comes up’ rather than one of meeting each day and stating nothing has come up. It should have been similar to the launch Go/No-Go poll. Rather then assuming a system is Go, ASK THEM. Make them commit. We didn’t do this in the STS-107 MMT meetings. We assumed the best. That was Bad.
I’m not going to get into a blame game. Not gonna happen.
Suffice to say, numerous Shuttle program management strategies AFTER the accident changed significantly. MMT meetings were required to be held every day—NO EXCEPTIONS. All projects were polled at each meeting in an attempt to drive out any issues or concerns. Dissenting opinions were not only encouraged, but sought out. A new “open” atmosphere was palpable and it made it much easier for lower level engineers to speak up. And I can say emphatically that these improvements served us well to the very end.
I will make one point, however, that I hope all future manned (and unmanned) program leaders will heed. When offered more data to help make a decision, take it. We had a sort of trite, but straightforward saying when tackling a tough problem – “Trust in God, all others bring data.” Of course I’m referring to the option of getting on-orbit photographs of Columbia from other Government agencies. We didn’t. We should have. Why didn’t we? All sorts of things factored in, but it’s mostly because we had gotten overconfident that foam hits couldn’t harm the Orbiter, though they were completely outside its design spec. Complacency from previous non-critical hits clouded our decisions. Columbia’s hits were characterized as ‘turnaround issues’ not ‘safety of flight’ issues. And even in the face of extremely knowledgeable engineers trying to get us to listen to their concerns, we pressed on.
Would the pictures have led to a different outcome? Given the timing required to effect a rescue mission, probably not. Getting the pictures and committing to the rescue would have had to have happened unrealistically early in the mission. But the point is the same – get data. Get all the data possible for making critical decisions. And be as blind to flight history data as possible. It can be the wolf waiting to pounce.
We learned thousands of lessons through the thirty-year Shuttle program. Fourteen astronauts paid the ultimate price for some of them. I hope we were the last program to experience what bad decisions can ultimately mean. However, I’m sorry to say that I’m sure we won’t be the last program to learn lessons the hard way.
A visible-light photo of Columbia on orbit taken from Hawaii by the US Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site (AMOS). The damaged area of the left wing is hidden behind the open cargo bay doors.
Columbia‘s launch on January 16, 2003 appeared to be smooth and uneventful. The shuttle reached orbit as planned and the crew immediately began preparing to operate the experiments in the Spacehab double module in the payload bay.
Later in the day, the imagery analysis team began analyzing the films from the tracking cameras that monitored Columbia‘s ascent. One of the cameras had not worked at all, and another was out of focus. However, another camera showed what appeared to be a large chunk of foam falling off the external tank and impacting the orbiter’s left wing 81.7 seconds into the flight.
Ann Micklos represented the thermal protection system team during the first viewing of the launch films. She said, “People’s jaws dropped. You could have heard a pin drop when we saw the foam strike. We watched it again and again and again.”
No one could tell whether underside of the wing or the wing’s leading edge bore the brunt of the impact. No one had ever seen such a large piece of foam hit the orbiter before.
The nearest precedent was ironically only four months earlier, on the launch of STS-112 in October 2002. When the reusable solid rocket boosters were towed to port after their retrieval from the Atlantic, someone noticed a large dent in the metal ring that attached the left booster to the external tank. What caused that?
Analysts examined the images taken of the ET took when Atlantis jettisoned the tank. A piece of insulating foam the size of a laser printer cartridge box had broken off of the external tank at the left bipod ramp—the structure that attaches the orbiter’s nose to the tank. The foam impacted the attachment ring at a relative speed of about 500 mph and created a deep dent in the solid metal.
Photo of missing foam on the external tank of STS-112. Columbia‘s ET shed a larger piece of foam from the same area. (NASA photo)
The STS-112 impact was mentioned in the flight readiness review for the next mission— STS-113—but it was not classified as a safety of flight issue. “More than 100 External Tanks have flown with only 3 documented instances of significant foam loss on a bipod ramp,” the report said. Without a deep and thorough discussion of the issue and possible ramifications, the reviewers cleared the tank was cleared to fly “as-is.”
The issue was not even discussed at the flight readiness review for STS-107.
It was an example of the normalization of deviance attitude that had doomed Challenger and had now become part of NASA’s culture once again. In essence, managers felt that although foam loss was not meeting specifications, it had never caused a significant problem before. Therefore, it was safe to continue flying.
Now, a piece almost twice that size of the one that damaged STS-112’s booster had broken off of Columbia‘s tank and hit the shuttle’s wing.
In their briefing to the Mission Management Team on January 17, the day after the launch, the video analysis team noted that the strike had occurred. However, since there were so many unknowns, the issue was sent back for further study. The meeting minutes did not even mention the foam strike.
…from the crew perspective this was a good launch and there were no issues to report…The launch film revealed no significant items.
The next MMT meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, January 21.
The launch day for Columbia and the STS-107 mission finally arrived on January 16, 2003. The mission had been rescheduled 13 times since NASA first announced it in 1999.
Commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, payload commander Mike Anderson, mission specialists Kalpana “KC” Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Dave Brown, and payload specialist Ilan Ramon had been training together as a team for several years. The mission delays, while frustrating, gave them time to bond even more closely as a family. They were ready to fly.
This was Bob Cabana’s first mission as the head of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate, and he was happy to be with his friends on the 107 crew as they suited up in the Operations and Checkout Building. Astronauts Kent “Rommel” Rominger (chief astronaut) and Jerry Ross (heading the Vehicle Integration Test Office) were also on hand on this joyous occasion. Robert Hanley from the Vehicle Integration Test Team taped the proceedings with Dave Brown’s video camera. Brown had been compiling a video documentary of the crew’s training and time together.
Before they exited the O&C Building for their ride to the launch pad, Husband gathered his crew in a circle for a moment of prayer. He recited the verses of Joshua 1:6-9, concluding with, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
The ebullient crew strode out of the O&C Building. Husband and McCool reached over their heads and patted the door frame in yet another launch day tradition.
The STS-107 crew and their entourage leave the O&C Building. (NASA photo KSC-03PD-0109)
The Astrovan stopped at a checkpoint near the VAB. Rominger left to fly the Shuttle Training Aircraft to check on conditions aloft in case the crew needed to fly an abort that would return them to the Shuttle Landing Facility. Cabana, Ross, Hanley, and the flight surgeon left to go to the launch control center. The surgeon went to man the medical console in the firing room. Cabana, Ross, and Hanley joined the crew’s families.
At the launch pad, the closeout crew strapped in the crew and said their goodbyes. The crew went through the pre-launch checklist. Everything looked to be in great shape.
The countdown proceeded smoothly. There was a scare just before the count came out of the final T minus 9 minute hold. An unidentified blip appeared on the radar—something that appeared to be headed toward the launch pad. With security at its highest point for any shuttle launch and an Israeli astronaut on board, Mike Leinbach came as close as he ever had to telling the crew to punch out. However, the issue cleared up in time for the count to resume. (This situation is described in much more detail in our upcoming book.)
Leinbach got on the comm loop with the crew: “If there ever was a time to use the phrase, ‘Good things come to people who wait’, this is the one time. From the many, many people who put this mission together: Good luck and Godspeed.”
Husband replied, “We appreciate it, Mike. The Lord has blessed us with a beautiful day here, and we’re going to have a great mission. We’re ready to go.”
A few seconds before 10:39 a.m., Columbia’s three main engines ignited. The ship “twanged’—rocked forward by the off-center impulse—and then returned to a vertical position. At that instant, the solid rocket boosters ignited, explosive bolts were fired, and Columbia roared off into a beautiful blue sky.
It was the last time anyone at KSC would see her as an intact vehicle.
Next: The foam strike
Columbia blasts off on her final mission, January 16, 2003. (NASA photo KSC-03PD-0116)
While there are no graphic images of the accident in the video, please be aware that the content may provoke strong emotions.
Bringing Columbia Home 