A searcher ducks under a barbed wire fence near Hemphill. Searchers had to go over or under obstacles—not around them—to ensure nothing was missed. (Jan Amen photo)
The Navy’s search efforts on Toledo Bend Reservoir proved frustrating, as no significant debris was recovered despite more than three thousand dives. (Jan Amen photo)
Pat Adkins (standing in truck bed) hoses mud off of Columbia’s nose landing gear, recovered on February 18, 2003. (NASA photo)
A muddy crater where one of Columbia’s turbopumps slammed into the ground at Fort Polk, Louisiana. (NASA photo)
One of Columbia’s main engine powerheads, pulled out from under fourteen feet of Louisiana mud. (NASA photo)
Workers inspect Columbia’s #2 main engine before the STS-107 mission. The powerhead is at left in this NASA photo.
Greg Cohrs (US Forest Service), Terry Lane (FBI), Greg Schumann (NASA), Debbie Awtonomow (NASA), and Olen Bean (Texas Forest Service) in the Hemphill VFW Hall on the one-year anniversary of the accident. (Photo courtesy Gerry Schumann)
Hemphill’s debris collection center, in the county’s Farmers Market Co-op shed. (Jan Amen photo)
Forester Rich Dotellis of the Texas Forest Service logs in debris recovered during the day at the Hemphill collection center. (Jan Amen photo)
Fire crews Florida 3 and 4 in San Augustine County on March 19, 2003—the day they found Columbia’s OEX recorder. (Jeremy Willoughby photo)
Columbia’s OEX recorder and tape reels—the “black box” that eluded searchers for forty-six days. (Robert Pearlman/collectSPACE)
Astronaut John Casper chats with members of a Native American fire crew at the Longview staging center. Casper, a veteran of four shuttle missions, was deputy director of NASA’s Mishap Investigation Team. (Jan Amen photo)
A portion of an STS-107 COLUMBIA RECOVERY TEAM banner, bearing thousands of signatures of searchers and other recovery workers who passed through Hemphill. NASA provided banners like this at every one of the staging areas during the recovery. (Jonathan Ward photo)
Charles Krenek’s search crew poses for a photo while refueling on March 27, 2003, the day of the fatal accident. From left, Matt Tschacher (US Forest Service), “Buzz” Mier (pilot), Richard Lange (United Space Alliance), Ronnie Dale (NASA), and Charles Krenek (Texas Forest Service). (Photo courtesy Boo Walker/Texas Forest Service)
The STS-114 crew arrives at Nacogdoches on April 10, 2003 to spend the day with search crews. Left to right: Soichi Noguchi, Jan Amen (Texas Forest Service), Eileen Collins, Jim Kelly. (Jan Amen photo)
The reusable launch vehicle hangar (foreground), at the south end of Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility runway. It was here that engineers reconstructed Columbia’s debris. (NASA photo)
The interior of the reconstruction hangar on March 27, 2003, about two months into the debris recovery process. Columbia’s nose cap and nose landing gear are at bottom center. (NASA photo)
Columbia’s nose landing gear sits amidst other recovered pieces of the orbiter’s structure in the reconstruction hangar, March 7, 2003. Engineering stations and “bread racks” storing miscellaneous components line the wall in the background. (NASA photo)
Reconstruction staff members gather around an STS-107 emblem on the runway apron outside the hangar. After this photo, the emblem was mounted above the hangar’s sliding doors. It was later relocated to the Vehicle Assembly Building. (NASA photo)
United Space Alliance chief engineer Warren “Woody” Woodworth (red shirt) briefs Columbia Accident Investigation Board chairman Admiral Hal Gehman (with glasses hanging around neck) and several congressmen in the reconstruction hangar. (NASA photo)
Portions of Columbia’s right-hand main landing gear and landing gear doors. Heavy oxidation of the landing gear strut, which was caused by chemical interaction with plasma during reentry, made it look like it had been rusting in the elements for years. (NASA photo)
Veteran astronauts Wally Schirra and Jim Lovell inspect the wreckage of one of Columbia’s elevon actuators on March 3, 2003. Left to right: Mike Leinbach, Lisa Malone (NASA Public Affairs), Jeff Wheeler (NASA Engineering), Steve Altemus, Jon Cowart, Schirra, Lovell. (NASA photo)
Cards and banners sent from students and well-wishers across America decorate the outer wall of the crew module reconstruction area. (NASA photo)
The yellow dinosaur that was the mascot of the crew module reconstruction team floats in Discovery’s cabin during Pam Melroy’s STS-120 mission in 2007. (NASA photo)
Slumped and pitted tiles from the underside of Columbia’s left wing show that melted aluminum from inside the wing was spraying out onto the outer surface of the wing before the vehicle broke up. Despite their degraded state, these tiles protected the underlying metal of the ship’s skin from melting. (NASA photo)
The tile table for the underside of Columbia’s left wing. Far fewer tiles were recovered from the left wing than the right wing, particularly aft of the leading edge of the wing in the center of the photo. (NASA photo)
Engineer Ann Micklos places a fragment on the left wing tile table in the reconstruction hangar. Each tile had a unique shape and was individually numbered. (NASA photo)
NASA structures engineer Lyle Davis attempts to reconstruct a part of one of the wing leading edge panels from small pieces of reinforced carbon-carbon found in the field. (NASA photo)
Technicians install a reinforced carbon-carbon leading edge panel on an orbiter’s wing. This illustrates the size of a typical RCC panel and its underlying structure. (NASA photo)
Steve Altemus (left) shows NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe the state of the reconstructed leading edge of Columbia’s left wing as of April 28, 2003. The large amount of missing material from RCC panels 8, 9, and 10 and their support structure provided overwhelming evidence that the wing was breached in that area. (NASA photo)
Ann Micklos’s watch, with the time of the accident frozen on its face. (Photo courtesy Ann Micklos)
A cross, erected shortly after the accident, marks the spot where the first remains of a Columbia crew member were discovered near Hemphill, Texas. (Jonathan Ward photo)
Recovered sections of Columbia’s airlock and tunnel to Spacehab in the Columbia Preservation Office in the Vehicle Assembly Building. (Robert Pearlman/collectSPACE)
Columbia’s nose landing gear and some of the wrecked components from its avionics bay in the Columbia Preservation Office. (NASA photo)
Mike Leinbach and LeRoy Cain share a tearful hug at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the conclusion of the STS-135 mission and the end of the Space Shuttle Program on July 21, 2011. (NASA photo)
Hemphill’s memorial star was transformed into a memorial to the sacrifices of Columbia’s crew and to Buzz Mier and Charles Krenek, with the new design unveiled on the sixth anniversary of the accident. (Courtesy Patricia Huffman Smith “Remembering Columbia” Museum)
The Patricia Huffman Smith “Remembering Columbia” Museum in Hemphill. Some of the exhibits include personal artifacts from the STS-107 crew, a space shuttle launch and entry suit, sample RCC panels, and a space shuttle cockpit simulator. (Jonathan Ward photo)
Challenger fuselage section and Columbia cockpit window frames in the “Forever Remembered” memorial in the Space Shuttle Atlantis building at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex. (NASA photo)
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