After every evening’s briefing for the Lufkin command staff, the Forest Resources Institute printed out geodetic maps for the next day’s search area. The maps showed the search objectives printed on aerial and satellite photographs of the area two miles on either side of the centerline computed by Jerry Ross and John Grunsfeld. Then the ground bosses delivered the maps to each of the forward search centers.
Translating the maps into action entailed briefing the county judges about the designated search locations, planning the logistics for deploying the searchers to the field, and notifying landowners in the search path. Search team leaders needed to know if there were territorial bulls in pastures that they would be crossing.
The day’s other good news came in the form of a plane from Kennedy that arrived at Barksdale at eleven o’clock. It brought us another sixty staff to assist in the debris recovery and processing effort.
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On Thursday, February 6, at our morning meeting in Barksdale, we first heard about the “Day 2 object” (described in chapter 3). It was intriguing—and disturbing—to learn something had been in orbit with Columbia early in its mission.
With the NTSB’s guidance, NASA’s internal accident investigation was taking two independent tracks. The data team in Houston concentrated on the telemetry and other data from the shuttle to determine the failure sequence. Our debris team would examine the physical evidence of how the shuttle likely came apart. Each team would develop their conclusions independently. If the two sets of conclusions matched, then NASA could be certain that it understood the cause of the accident.
We discussed the authority of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and how our internal teams would interact with them. We agreed that Kennedy would receive all structural hardware first. Selected items could be sent to labs afterward with joint approval of our KSC team and the CAIB. Memory devices, tapes, and films were to go directly to the data team in Houston for analysis.
Representatives from our team had visited fifteen sites in California and found no credible shuttle debris there. A resident of the Yosemite/Tahoe area had heard twin sonic booms and found what he thought was a piece of tile from the shuttle. (It turned out to be a Styrofoam cooler.) However, a sheriff’s department found what appeared to be a piece of tile with black specks, which needed closer examination. We sent another team to the Phoenix area to investigate possible debris sightings.27
Logistics for all the KSC people arriving at Barksdale and Lufkin was proving difficult. United Space Alliance’s Rikki Ojeda and Linda Moynihan were using their personal credit cards to hold rooms for KSC staff coming into town. Both had run up several thousand dollars of charges. I contacted Kennedy and requested more administrative assistance.
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Massive search efforts proceeded despite cold temperatures and a steady rain throughout the debris field. Limited visibility restricted some air search operations, but ground crews continued to work.28
Debris teams were asked to concentrate on locating reinforced carbon-carbon panels from Columbia’s left wing, material from the shuttle’s outer mold line, supporting structure, and tile from the shuttle’s belly. Analysis of the telemetry implied the presence of hot plasma inside Columbia prior to the accident, but it was still unclear how it had entered the shuttle’s interior. Possible entry points included breaches in the left wing’s leading edge, the left landing gear door, or from missing tiles on the shuttle’s belly or underside of the left wing.
Despite the televised warnings about potential dangers, local residents were bringing in debris that they had collected. In the Lufkin Civic Center, astronaut Brent Jett called Ed Mango over to the astronauts’ table to show him one item that someone had dropped off. Mango identified it by its distinctive shape as the door to one of Columbia’s star trackers—optical and electronic devices in the ship’s nose that were part of the navigation system.
Another citizen brought in one item that he had found at his child’s school. Mango instantly recognized that it was a pyrotechnic device. Not wanting to create a panic about a potentially armed and unstable explosive device in the middle of the command center, Mango nonetheless found himself backing away from the table, his face bright red. He thanked the citizen and sent him on his way. After he left, Mango called out, “I need a metal box, and I need it now!”
The collection centers continued to receive hazardous items from the field. When NASA started planning to ship the collected propellant tanks and pyros from Texas to Barksdale, regulations got in the way. Transporting potentially hazardous material across state lines was considered a violation of EPA regulations. Storing the material at Barksdale also exposed the air force to liability under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. After lengthy discussions and legal research, EPA eventually determined that it had authority to move hazardous debris from Texas to Louisiana, since both were officially declared emergency sites.29
By the evening’s check-in call, Carswell Air Station near Fort Worth reported 198 pieces of confirmed debris in their hangar, including a piece of the leading edge of the left wing, its underlying carrier panel, as well as other material from that wing. They also reported that the Civil Air Patrol in the Dallas area was actively supporting airborne search efforts.
More than one thousand pieces of debris had been located in Sabine County, with about four hundred cataloged.30 The collection center in Nacogdoches was still receiving forty to fifty calls per hour about debris sightings.
Lufkin reported that two recovered nitrogen tetroxide tanks had been completely decontaminated. Six EPA technicians were exposed to hazardous chemicals during the cleanup. The armed pyrotechnic T-handle that had been turned in to Ed Mango was now secure in a munitions case.
Recovered pieces of the outboard elevon from Columbia’s left wing came in to the Palestine hangar. Other reported finds included a harness, a boot, strips of clothing, and an eight-foot section that might have come from the shuttle’s left wing, with dozens of thermal tiles and heat sensors still attached.31
Several items from the avionics equipment area of the crew compartment were discovered in San Augustine County on Thursday. NASA used this information to request that a special team search the area northwest of Bronson on Friday for a classified box that had been in the same section of the shuttle’s avionics bay.32
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Searchers near Palestine found a videotape cassette on Thursday—one of many that at least partially survived Columbia’s breakup. The tapes were collected and sent to Houston. Several days later, astronaut Ron Garan took them in his T-38 jet to the NTSB headquarters in Washington, DC, to see if any information could be recovered from the recordings.
Garan and an NTSB technician spent hours playing back the tapes, which in many cases were charred or damaged. Most were either blank or contained data from the scientific experiments in Columbia’s Spacehab module. As midnight approached, Garan phoned Houston to report that he had seen nothing relevant to the accident investigation. After the call, he discovered that there was one more tape to check. He began playing it, and within a few seconds, he froze.
It was the cockpit video of Columbia’s reentry.
“The hair stood up on the back of my neck,” Garan said, “because we didn’t know how long the video was going to last or what it was going to show.” To his relief, the tape ended several minutes before the first sign of trouble.
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.33
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At nine in the morning, on Friday, February 7, Kennedy Space Center conducted its memorial service. Bob Crippen, Columbia’s first pilot, delivered a moving eulogy for his beloved Columbia and her crew:
It is fitting that we ar
e gathered here on the shuttle runway for this event. As Sean [O’Keefe] said, it was here last Saturday that family and friends waited anxiously to celebrate with their crew their successful mission and safe return to earth. It never happened.
I’m sure that Columbia, which had traveled millions of miles, and made that fiery reentry twenty-seven times before, struggled mightily in those last few moments to bring her crew home safely once again. She wasn’t successful.
Columbia was hardly a thing of beauty, except to those of us who loved and cared for her. She was often bad-mouthed for being a little heavy in the rear end, but many of us can relate to that. Many said she was old and past her prime. Still, she had only lived barely a quarter of her design life. In years, she was only twenty-two. Columbia had a great many missions ahead of her. She, along with the crew, had her life snuffed out in her prime.
There is heavy grief in our hearts, which will diminish with time, but it will never go away, and we will never forget.
Hail Rick, Willie, KC, Mike, Laurel, Dave, and Ilan.
Hail Columbia.34
Immediately after the service, Sean O’Keefe and Bill Readdy went to the hangar at the south end of the runway. Shuttle Test Director Steve Altemus, who was setting up the hangar and who would manage the daily activities of the reconstruction effort, showed them the facility and walked them through how NASA would examine and reconstruct Columbia’s debris.
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Search teams continued to explore areas in Toledo Bend Reservoir where debris might be underwater. They used side-scan sonar and aerial overflights to identify several sites for further exploration.35 Aerial spotters occasionally thought they saw things below the surface. Whatever the objects were, they were gone by the time the search teams reached the area.36
At five o’clock that day, the amnesty period for citizens to turn in space shuttle debris in their possession expired. About twenty people had taken advantage of the amnesty to return material to NASA. Anyone subsequently found with illegally removed shuttle material would be subject to prosecution.
Late in the afternoon, Pat Adkins investigated a call from someone who thought that they had located part of Columbia’s side hatch. He met with Department of Corrections guards who were mounted on horseback. They had been searching the Indian Mounds Wilderness Area, near the reported locations of a car-sized object that crashed into Toledo Bend Reservoir and another large object that landed somewhere in the woods at the same time. The ground was muddy and waterlogged, and the area was thick with downed trees.
Adkins put on his backpack and said, “Let’s get started.”
The guards looked at him and said, “You don’t understand. It’s a mile and a half back in the woods. You’ll never make it in and out before dark. You’re gonna have to ride.”
Adkins was uncomfortable about riding horseback. The guards gave Adkins the gentlest horse they had—George, a gelding, more than twenty years old. Adkins mounted the horse and followed the guards back into the woods. George was apparently tired after a long day’s work. He stopped several times along the way to suck up muddy water from puddles. Then, realizing he had fallen behind the other horses, he would trot to catch up. Adkins had absolutely no control over him.
They came to a ravine, which the first three men jumped over on their horses. However, they cautioned Adkins, “You might want to get off of him.” It was too late. Adkins held on to the front and back of the saddle and managed to stay on when George jumped the ravine. The guards laughed uproariously. One of them said, “That was worth the trip today!”
They found the object, and Adkins dismounted to examine it. After he knocked some of the mud off of it, he realized that it was not part of the hatch after all—just part of the propulsion system. However, as he stared at it, he began to imagine it as a hatch and porthole. His thoughts turned toward Columbia’s astronauts inside the crew compartment, and he broke down in tears.
After collecting his emotions, Adkins bagged the item and put it in his backpack. He rode George back to the road. Every time George trotted to catch up with the other horses, the heavy metal object in Adkins’s backpack flopped up and hit him in the back of the head.
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On Saturday, February 8, NASA’s teams in Barksdale, Lufkin, and the Carswell Naval Air Station briefly stood down to attend memorial services for Columbia’s crew.
Former astronaut Jim Halsell led the service at Barksdale. He was the Shuttle Program manager at KSC, and he had asked me early on what he could do to help. I requested that he arrange the memorial service for his fallen comrades, which he did with dignity and strength. Retired Admiral William Pickavance, now USA’s deputy director of Florida operations, brought with him from KSC the banner that decorated the launchpad gate before Columbia’s final flight. Having the GO COLUMBIA! banner hanging on the wall in Barksdale was both a painful and poignant reminder for the workers who had cared for her at KSC and who now had to sift through her debris.37
From Houston, Ron Dittemore issued orders for the investigation teams to take Sunday off and rest. We had endured a week filled with long days of emotionally and physically demanding work. Even though we were all exhausted and conditions were miserable, no one wanted to stand down. In Carswell, at the northwestern end of the search area, freezing temperatures, ice, and snow tormented people who were bone tired from having searched fourteen hours per day for the past seven days. And yet, the search teams still went out after the memorial service—just as they had every day for the past week—to look for and recover more debris from the shuttle.38
Meanwhile, imagery analysis of Columbia in flight was yielding tantalizing results. NASA was able to piece together nearly continuous video coverage of Columbia in flight from the coast of California until the shuttle broke up over Dallas, thanks to dozens of amateur videographers who provided their cameras and tapes to NASA. 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. NASA was evaluating the remote possibility Columbia had collided with some sort of debris or a micrometeorite as it crossed California.39 We analyzed the weather radar along Columbia’s flight path as she flew across the United States and determined that there was no correlation between the “debris shedding” events and the local weather.
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, who was returning to Fort Hood from a night training mission when Columbia broke up, recorded a particularly important video. 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 data on the video, we gained crucial information about the shuttle’s trajectory when it broke up, the dynamics of the disintegration, and the path of some of the major components after the shuttle came apart.
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 from Texas was being prepared for imminent shipment to Kennedy. There were already 561 pieces of debris in Barksdale’s hangar, with
many more on the way soon. Of the twelve thousand pieces of debris collected in the field so far, none provided obvious evidence of why the shuttle broke up.41 The reconstruction team would have to perform more exacting analyses to see what clues the debris could provide.
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At the end of the first week of operations, the debris search area included sixty-one Texas counties, covering nearly thirty-three thousand square miles, and affecting more than seven million residents. NASA had three search teams at work in California, one in Arizona, and one in New Mexico.42 We had dubious reports of debris being found in twenty-six other states and Jamaica, Canada, and Grand Bahama. They seemed implausible, but they still needed to be investigated.43 Material might be in some of the reservoirs in Texas. The US Navy’s Sea Systems Command volunteered their services for search operations in the major bodies of water along Columbia’s flight path.44
Miraculously, no injuries had been reported from the shuttle’s breakup. About 130 people had gone to hospitals in the impact areas because of concerns about health issues. But nobody was injured by the debris, and no one had been admitted to the hospital for treatment. 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
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Citizens reported large pieces of debris in three ponds in Palestine on Sunday. NASA promised that divers would be sent to investigate as soon as the human remains operations were complete.
Bringing Columbia Home Page 16
