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

One requirement of NASA’s agency-wide contingency plan for major incidents was to set up an independent review board—one not under NASA’s direction. Bill Readdy called the people who were named in the plan as members of the accident investigation board. These individuals had the requisite technical, scientific, and organizational expertise to serve on the panel.

The contingency plan did not name the board chairman. That was left to the administrator’s discretion, driven by the nature of the circumstance.

Sean O’Keefe’s thoughts turned to Admiral Harold “Hal” Gehman Jr., who had a background in complex bureaucratic organizations and had just completed an investigation of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole . Gehman’s temperament and experience seemed perfectly suited to lead the Columbia accident investigation.

Gehman heard about the accident just before O’Keefe’s deputy administrator Fred Gregory phoned to ask him to lead the board.

Accident Plus Ninety Minutes

As he left Tyler in his car and drove toward Lufkin, the FBI’s Jeff Millslagle recalled other incidents he had investigated, including the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, which left parts of the plane and remains of the passengers floating in Long Island Sound. He thought that by comparison, this would be a small incident. After all, how much of a shuttle could possibly survive a breakup and reentry from so high up?

He was twenty minutes out of Tyler when he saw a Texas Department of Public Safety officer standing by a hole in the mud beside the roadway. Millslagle asked the trooper what he was doing. “This is a piece of the shuttle. We’ve been instructed to guard these things.”

The closer Millslagle got to Lufkin on his ninety-mile drive, the more debris he saw.

Jan Amen, assistant to the state fire chief in the Texas Forest Service, had heard the explosions at her home in Nacogdoches County. She drove to the Etoile Fire Department, where she was a volunteer firefighter. She encountered pieces of the shuttle along the way. Many were like one she saw lying in the middle of Highway 103, which was over one foot in length, had three burn holes through the middle, and was twisted into a bowl shape. She and her fellow firefighters flagged and stood by pieces of debris while waiting for the Department of Public Safety to arrive. [8] Jan Amen email, February 4, 2003.

One hundred and fifty miles south of Etoile, NASA’s Mission Management Team gathered in the Action Center in the Mission Control Center building about an hour after the contingency was declared. Personnel from Kennedy, including my management team and me, teleconferenced in from a large room on the first floor of the Launch Control Center. Representatives from all the major NASA and contractor organizations either joined in person or phoned in. Ron Dittemore led the meeting. The atmosphere was solemn. As people took their places, they speculated on what might have caused the accident.

O’Keefe promised NASA’s full support, and he delivered moving words of sorrow and resolve that deeply touched the team. He announced that he had activated the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Mishap Interagency Investigation Board (which shortly thereafter was renamed the Columbia Accident Investigation Board [CAIB]), with Admiral Hal Gehman as its chairman. [9] Donna M. Shafer and Amy Voigt LeConey, “First Hand Account of Selected Legal Issues from the Recovery and Investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia,” Journal of Space Law , vol. 30 (2004), 40, www.nasa.gov/externalflash/CAIB/docs/CAIB%20Law%20Review%20Article.pdf .

Dittemore said he was receiving reports that some debris was on the ground in Texas and Louisiana. The first question asked was, “How hazardous is it?” No one knew the extent to which the toxic and explosive materials aboard Columbia might survive reentry and make it to the ground.

Managers began to focus on recovery. [10] Phillip Stepaniak, executive ed., Loss of Signal: Aeromedical Lessons Learned from the STS-107 Columbia Space Shuttle Mishap , SP-2014-616 (Washington, DC: NASA, 2014), 33. Dave Whittle and his Mishap Investigation Team would lead NASA’s internal investigation by recovering the physical debris. Dittemore’s voice broke with emotion as he said, “Let’s go get the crew. We can’t leave them out there.”

The question arose, “What can Kennedy do to help?” Ed Mango and I huddled briefly with our team. After a few moments, someone suggested, “Why don’t we treat this like a TAL landing?”

One of the shuttle’s launch abort modes, in case an emergency prevented the vehicle from reaching orbit, was a transoceanic abort landing (TAL). Every KSC contingency plan assumed the shuttle would come down within sight of a runway or make an emergency landing at one of the TAL sites in Europe or Africa. In the event of a “nonroutine” landing, Kennedy was to deploy its Rapid Response Team (RRT), about eighty KSC engineers and technicians who were experts on the shuttle and its systems. Their role was to get the situation under control, retrieve the shuttle, and bring it back. [11] Shafer and LeConey, “Legal Issues,” 42. The RRT seemed like the appropriate group to support this incident, even though this was unlike anything we had ever envisioned.

A few members of the RRT were trained in how to conduct crash investigations. However, we had never trained for a scenario where the orbiter broke up far from the landing site. Such a situation had always been considered a “non-credible event”—something too unlikely to happen. The emergency procedures would not be much help, either. No one yet knew where—or even if— there would be a shuttle to retrieve. NASA had no reliable information yet regarding if or where Columbia had fallen to the ground or if it had splashed into the Gulf of Mexico. We only knew that the RRT would deploy somewhere between Dallas and Florida.

I formally suggested that NASA send the Rapid Response Team to support the recovery. Dittemore and the senior leaders liked the idea. Leadership of the RRT normally fell to Kennedy’s processing flow director for the mission—Scott Thurston, in this case. However, everyone felt that a more senior person needed to head the team in this complex situation.

They appointed me to command KSC’s forces in the field.

Dittemore asked me, “When can you deploy?” I said that the air force always kept a transport plane on reserve for NASA in case of launch emergencies. It was not stationed at KSC, but could be brought to the center within six hours.

Immediately after the meeting, my team and I discussed how to begin the investigation and recovery process. We started identifying names and thinking about the logistics of getting those people onto planes to Texas as quickly as possible, either on the first transport flight that afternoon or the next day. Managers tracked people down at their children’s soccer games or other weekend activities and told them to pack a bag and get to KSC as quickly as possible. While no one knew yet where the team would deploy, there was no time to lose while waiting for better information. It was imperative to get people moving immediately to start securing any hazardous debris.

One of the people contacted was Linda Moynihan, who provided administrative support for United Space Alliance’s director of safety and quality. She was told to pack a bag for what she thought would be a week’s stay in Texas. Then she visited as many automated teller machines as she could to withdraw cash for the team in the field. Arriving in her office at KSC, she filled two copy-paper boxes with office supplies.