Read Out of Orbit Storyline:
On February 1, 2003, the nation was stunned to watch the shuttle Columbia disintegrate into a blue-green sky. Despite the numerous new reports surrounding the tragedy, the public remained largely unaware that three men, U.S. astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, remained orbiting the earth. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts, who were already near the end of a fourteen-week mission, had suddenly lost their ride home.Out of Orbit is the harrowing, behind-the-scenes chronicle of the efforts of beleaguered Mission Controls in Houston and Moscow who worked frantically against the clock to bring their men safely back to Earth, ultimately settling on a plan that felt, at best, like a long shot. Given that no shuttle could come for them, the astronauts' only hope for a return flight became a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-1 capsule, latched to the side of the space...Pages of Out of Orbit :
