Michael Leinbach - Bringing Columbia Home - The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

Hamilton, Maddox, and the trooper next responded to a call from a woman’s farm outside Bronson. She had found partial human remains in her pasture. The sheriff went to the farmhouse and asked the family for a sheet to cover the remains. Someone suggested that they be removed from the pasture. Hamilton refused. “No, we ain’t movin’ nothin’! This is a crime scene.” He now knew that the gravity of the situation required more than just taking photos and recording GPS locations. He photographed the remains and placed a sheriff’s department officer on guard.

Hamilton and Maddox drove from scene to scene for the next several hours, meeting DPS troopers at the location of each reported sighting. A few findings appeared to be partial remains of the crew, but most were pieces of the shuttle.

At one house, an aluminum I-beam had fallen through the carport roof, broken through the concrete floor, and buried itself in the ground. This eventually turned out to be the only structural damage sustained anywhere in Sabine County.

At that time, Hamilton was the only law officer in Sabine County who had a digital camera. After visiting the first six or seven scenes, Hamilton had already filled two data disks with photos. He realized it would be physically impossible for him to visit all the debris sightings, especially now that he knew bodies were on the ground. And there were not enough law officers in Sabine County to guard every piece of debris being discovered.

Accident Plus One Hour

Astronauts Mark Kelly and Jim Wetherbee were at their suburban Houston homes when contact with Columbia was lost. Both immediately knew the situation was dire. They rushed to the astronaut office in Building 4 South at Johnson Space Center.

As quintessential type A personalities, astronauts are biased toward acting to bring a situation under control. Patience can be a tough virtue for them to exercise, especially when the lives of their colleagues are on the line. While they awaited official orders, the astronauts at JSC took whatever actions they could. Mark Kelly and rookie Mike Good brought out the contingency checklist and reviewed the required actions. Working through the list, Kelly and Good made phone calls, and within fifteen minutes, nearly fifty people were in the astronaut office conference room. Discussions began on how to farm out the astronauts to locate Columbia ’s crew.

Several of the astronauts decided to head to Ellington Field, about halfway between JSC and Houston. Ellington was the home base for the T-38 jets the astronauts flew around the country. Wetherbee drove home to pick up his flight suit and pack his overnight bag, and then drove to Ellington to await orders.

Kelly pointed out to Andy Thomas that the contingency plans never envisioned the shuttle coming down within a two-hour drive of Houston. Kelly said, “We really need to send somebody to the scene right now.”

Thomas said, “Okay. You go.”

Kelly considered his options for getting north to the accident scene as quickly as possible. He phoned Harris County constable Bill Bailey and requested a helicopter. Bailey made a few calls and phoned back. “I’m sending a car to pick you up. The coast guard is going to take you up there.” Kelly grabbed astronaut Greg “Ray J” Johnson to accompany him. They arrived at Ellington Field and boarded the waiting helicopter.

As they took off, the pilot asked, “Where are we going?”

Kelly said, “I heard there’s debris coming down at Nacogdoches. Let’s go to the airport there.”

While the astronaut corps mobilized, NASA management activated its Mishap Investigation Team (MIT) in the Mission Control Center at JSC. NASA appointed the MIT members as a routine matter prior to each space shuttle mission in case anything were to go wrong during the mission. Dave Whittle had been identified as the MIT chairman for STS-107. [6] NASA Accident Investigation Team Final Report , 57. The ten members assigned to the MIT for a mission were published via internal memo six weeks before flight.

Whittle was the chairman of NASA’s system safety review panel and the safety manager for the Shuttle Program. He was certified as an aircraft accident investigator by the National Transportation Safety Board and the University of Southern California. He also had extensive experience investigating space accidents.

Whittle usually attended shuttle launches, but was off duty for most landings. He was at home when Mission Management Team chairperson Linda Ham called to say, “We think we’re going to need you.”

He was unaware at that point that Columbia was lost, but he knew something bad must have happened for Ham to call him at home on a Saturday morning. He told his wife, “Pack my stuff. I may be gone a long, long time.”

Astronaut Dom Gorie had just returned home to Houston that morning from a vacation in Hawaii. While he and his wife were unpacking, someone called and told him to turn on his television. Gorie was the designated astronaut representative for Whittle’s investigation team. He realized that he had to get to the office as quickly as possible. He grabbed his pre-packed “deployment” bag, said good-bye to his wife, and was at JSC to assist Whittle in less than an hour.

Whittle did not know the full extent of the situation until he was briefed in the Mission Control Center, where the Mission Management Team was gathering. After a quick briefing, Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore and Ham told Whittle, “You’ve got about thirty minutes to come back in here and tell us what you want to do.” [7] Dave Whittle, “Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) Process Lessons Learned Video Interview” (Washington, DC: NASA Headquarters, 2013), www.nasa.gov/externalflash/CAIB/transcripts/whittle/whittle03.pdf .

Whittle’s team would be among NASA’s first responders at the scene. In this circumstance, he would be in charge of collecting and protecting all shuttle debris and impounding it for the eventual official investigation of the accident. His scope also included the sensitive matter of handling the remains of Columbia ’s crew. He needed to set up a command center. It had to be a secure location, away from the press and other prying eyes, able to accommodate multiple types of support aircraft from cargo planes to T-38 jets, and had to have appropriate support facilities such as a morgue and a staging warehouse. If he needed to set up a headquarters in the field, the Department of Defense Manned Spaceflight support group was available to provide for NASA’s infrastructure needs, with tents, helicopters, food, and other necessities. However, Whittle thought it might be best to manage the investigation from a military base somewhere near the shuttle’s last known location. But where was that?

Reports were coming in of debris hitting the ground from near Dallas to Fort Polk, Louisiana. Looking at a map, Whittle saw that Carswell Naval Air Station near Fort Worth was too far north and west of the reported sightings. Fort Polk seemed too far south. Barksdale Air Force Base, near Shreveport, Louisiana, looked like a possible option for the MIT’s strategic command center.

Whittle called the vice commander of the Second Bomb Wing at Barksdale, Colonel Charles McGuirk. The base and its contingent of B-52 bombers were on alert for possible imminent action in Iraq. Despite the tense military situation, McGuirk immediately offered to host the MIT at the base. The facilities and computers from a court-martial hearing at the base were still in place and available for NASA’s immediate use. Whittle and his team could fly in and be in business that day.

While Dave Whittle was getting his team ready for action in Texas, NASA’s senior officials who were still at the Launch Control Center at Kennedy had to initiate a broader investigation.