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

Most of the material went to the VAB the same way that it arrived from Barksdale—in bags inside large triple-wall boxes. The main difference was that the materials were now identified, inventoried, and sorted into tote trays inside the boxes. They were keyed to a database that made it easy to locate and retrieve any piece requested by researchers for study. As in the reconstruction hangar—but on a much smaller scale—the majority of the material would be stored off to the side in the boxes, with selected pieces on display on the floor or on racks.

Beginning on September 15, 2003, workers started loading all of the Columbia material onto flatbed trailers and transporting it one and one-half miles south to the VAB. Piece by piece, box by box, propellant tank by landing gear strut by RCC frame, a team of about forty workers took everything up the VAB elevator to the sixteenth floor and loaded it carefully into the preservation office. The move was finished by the end of September.

The reconstruction phase of Columbia ’s story came to a quiet close.

Even though the recovery and reconstruction were officially over, residents of East Texas continued to find pieces of the shuttle that were overlooked during the ground and air searches. The great majority of the calls came from well-intentioned citizens who wanted to do their part to preserve Columbia . Jim Comer said, “One of the toughest emotional moments for me was when a lady sent in a Styrofoam plate with a letter that said, ‘Dear Space Shuttle Team: I found this piece of foam tile in my back yard. God bless all of you for your work.’ I broke down and started crying. I wrote her a letter back and thanked her.”

The volume of calls tailed off after the first several years, but people still continue to find shuttle debris on occasion. One of Columbia ’s liquid oxygen tanks—somehow missed during the navy’s search in 2003—was exposed at the bottom of Lake Nacogdoches in late July 2011, when a severe drought caused the lake’s water level to drop about eleven feet. [6] “Columbia Tank Found on Lakebed,” NASA online article, August 3, 2011, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/columbiatankfound.html . NASA and local officials retrieved the tank and took it to KSC to join the rest of Columbia ’s debris.

Pieces of Columbia will probably continue to turn up for years. “There’s still stuff out there,” said Greg Cohrs. “The ground was really wet at the time of the accident, so there’s stuff buried. It’s part of the archaeological record now.” I agree. We only found three of the six turbopumps. They’re so massive; three more must be out there somewhere. Perhaps one of them was the car-sized object that people reported hearing splash into the Toledo Bend Reservoir.

Toward the end of search operations in the spring of 2003, NASA established the Columbia Recovery Office to handle calls from citizens about debris findings. Five employees from Johnson Space Center staffed the office until the function was transitioned to Kennedy in October 2003. This administratively consolidated the storage and coordination of Columbia ’s debris in one location. [7] “Columbia Debris Finds Final Home in VAB,” Spaceport News , October 31, 2003, 2.

The anniversaries of all three of NASA’s fatal spacecraft accidents fall within a one-week period between January 27 and February 1. Sean O’Keefe designated the last Thursday in January as an annual NASA Remembrance Day for the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger , and Columbia . On that first Remembrance Day—January 29, 2004—KSC Director Jim Kennedy and I officially dedicated the Columbia Research and Preservation Office in the VAB.

Pam Melroy said at the ceremony, “I realized this facility is Columbia ’s ‘Arlington.’ We have a very special place to come and reflect and be inspired. If you’ve ever been to Arlington [National Cemetery], it’s a very inspiring place to see all the people that have sacrificed everything for the sake of our country. And it’s the same thing here for the thousands of lives that built Columbia , maintained her, launched her, and flew her. That is our dedication here.” [8] “VAB 16th Floor A Tower Is Columbia’s Arlington,” Spaceport News , February 13, 2004, 5.

Even before we officially dedicated the Columbia office, its new scientific and educational mission began. In November 2003, two teams from Johnson Space Center requested samples of tile and of Columbia ’s right wing leading edge for study. The teams were tasked with developing methods and materials that astronauts could use to repair the shuttle’s thermal protection system in orbit. Even had Columbia ’s crew known about the breach in the left wing, there was probably nothing they could have done about it, since the shuttle did not carry a repair kit. The techniques that the JSC teams developed as a result of studying Columbia ’s materials were subsequently tested in space aboard Discovery on STS-121 in July 2006. [9] STS-121 mission summary, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-121.html . In another study, NASA sampled some of Columbia ’s high-pressure storage tanks to help certify that the other shuttles were safe to fly. [10] Interviews with Mike Leinbach and Mike Ciannilli.

One of the first academic uses of samples of Columbia debris was in a masters-level class in materials sciences forensics at Lehigh University. Jim Comer and several others from the reconstruction effort attended the presentations given by the students. Our people were impressed at the insights and conclusions the students garnered from the debris. [11] Interviews with Jim Comer and Steve Altemus.

Institutions, spacecraft designers, and other researchers can petition to borrow material from Columbia for study. Scott Thurston said, “ Columbia , at her core, was a scientific vessel, flying highly scientific missions. Her ongoing contributions to science are the legacy of her and her crew. We would want them to know that they were still contributing to that mission.”

Unlike a military crash investigation, the CAIB’s analysis of the Columbia accident did not include a detailed survivability analysis of what happened to the crew and their equipment. Pam Melroy vigorously advocated conducting such a study during the accident investigation. However, it was considered to be outside of the CAIB’s charter, and no funding was available to keep her crew module reconstruction team together after the CAIB confirmed the cause of the accident. Much to her relief, the Space Shuttle Program Office later agreed that studying Columbia ’s debris offered a unique learning opportunity that could benefit future spacecraft design. In July 2004, NASA formed a multidisciplinary Spacecraft Crew Survival Integrated Investigation Team, with Melroy as one of the deputy project managers. [12] NASA, Crew Survival Investigation Report , 4–5.

The team visited KSC several times and conducted two major debris reviews using material pulled from storage for study. Melroy said she was particularly grateful for the extra effort expended by the crew module reconstruction team in documenting the debris in 2003, because it facilitated retrieving materials for this study.

Melroy recalled the most personally impactful moment of her study to be examining the ship’s R2 control panel, which was immediately to the right of pilot Willie McCool in the cockpit. The switches on other control panels recovered from Columbia might have been jostled during the breakup, impact, or subsequent ground handling. Since the investigators could not be sure how those switches were configured just prior to the vehicle breaking up, the switch positions on those panels were not valid evidence for the investigation. However, the R2 panel was discovered in the field bent nearly in half, which protected the switches from being accidentally moved during the recovery. Some of the switches on the panel are lever-locked, requiring two actions to move them to a new position. When the investigation team pried the R2 panel open, they discovered that two of three lever-locked switches in one cluster were in a different setting than the third. These were the controls to cool down the shuttle’s auxiliary power units before restarting them.