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

There was no backup to the heatshield system. If it was seriously compromised, the crew was not going to make it home.

NASA created the Mission Management Team (MMT) process after the Challenger disaster as a way to ensure that potential issues like Challenger ’s O-rings [1] Challenger was lost due to a cascading series of events that started with the failure of rubber O-rings in a joint of a solid rocket booster. Low-level engineers were unable to persuade middle management to delay the launch or even to seriously consider their concerns that the O-rings and the booster design might not work as intended in the frigid temperatures on the morning of Challenger ’s January 28, 1986, launch day. Because middle management quashed the concern, the launch team and mission controllers were unaware that there was a potentially serious problem. came to the attention of Shuttle Program managers. NASA wanted a way for information to flow quickly to senior management, without being filtered or suppressed. The “prelaunch” MMT sat on the same row as me in one of the glass-walled “bubbles” in the Firing Room on launch day listening for anything that might make them question launching that day. It was their job to assess issues that were not part of the documented launch countdown process but that could still pose risks to the crew and thus be reasons not to launch.

Many of the members of the prelaunch MMT then moved on to the “on-orbit” MMT. This MMT was supposed to meet regularly during a mission to assess any issues that arose during flight or could affect landing.

Kennedy Space Center’s operational responsibility for a mission essentially ended once the shuttle had blasted off. However, KSC managers—including me, as launch director—participated in the on-orbit MMT. We focused on any issues that might affect preparations for the vehicle’s next mission once the shuttle returned from flight. Had something cropped up that would delay Columbia ’s processing flow for her next flight? Were there any special issues that would require unusual servicing on the runway?

The imagery analysis team reported the foam strike to the MMT on January 17, the second day of Columbia ’s mission. Their initial conclusions were unprecedented. No one had ever seen such a large piece of foam come off the external tank and impact the orbiter during ascent. The analysts said it was a “big hit,” but no one knew how bad it was. It was just lightweight foam, but it may have hit the orbiter in a potentially dangerous location. The MMT did not appear concerned, but they asked for further analysis.

Engineering teams examined the limited data they had at their disposal. The only computer program available was designed to model the impact of ice particles on the tiles on the orbiter’s underside. The software algorithms were not intended to assess damage from foam insulation strikes or hits on areas other than tiles. With so many unknowns, it was difficult to get consistent results from the analyses. The software’s appropriateness for use in this case was a stretch, but it was all that our analysts had to work with.

The consequences of foam impacts on the RCC material on the leading edge of the wing were even more of an unknown. Reinforced carbon-carbon had a very hard surface, which some specialists considered too tough to be seriously damaged by foam impacts. Some engineers tried unsuccessfully several times to convince their colleagues that RCC was less forgiving than tile, but their objections largely went unappreciated. While someone could almost crush tiles in their hands, RCC felt like an extremely tough and capable material.

Despite the application of the best minds to the problem, there was simply no reliable way to predict what the damage might be. Ann Micklos said, “We never had a clear picture of where the impact was. It was all assumptions. And you can’t solve a problem based on assumptions.”

Robert Hanley and his boss Jerry Ross had returned to Houston after the launch. Hanley mentioned to Ross in a hallway conversation that he had heard reports about people investigating a possible debris strike on Columbia . Hanley said the word going around JSC was that the foam strike was a “nonissue.” Everyone thought foam was too lightweight to cause any serious damage.

Ross replied to Hanley, “I’m not so sure.”

Ross was recalling his experience as a crewman on Atlantis ’s STS-27 mission, where hundreds of the orbiter’s tiles were heavily damaged during launch, and missing tile created a hole in the heatshield that nearly burned through on reentry. Atlantis held the distinction of being the most heavily damaged spaceship ever to survive reentry. [2] Atlantis on STS-27 holds the distinction of being the most heavily damaged spacecraft to return safely from orbit. The cork tip of the right-hand SRB fell off during ascent and gouged the side of the orbiter. More than seven hundred tiles were damaged, and one was knocked off completely. During reentry, plasma completely melted through a steel antenna cover under the missing tile and had started melting the skin of the orbiter, but Atlantis passed through the period of peak heating before its airframe was breached. And on STS-112, just four months before Columbia ’s launch, a smaller piece of foam fell off the external tank and dented the metal ring attaching the left solid rocket booster (SRB) to the tank.

The MMT discussed the foam strike at the four MMT meetings held during Columbia ’s mission. The engineer presenting the issue to the MMT was new to his position. The MMT pressed him on data to back up his conclusions about potential damage to Columbia —in essence, “prove to us there’s a problem.” He responded that the team needed more data to make an accurate assessment.

Engineers who had been with NASA since the early days of the shuttle recalled that national security assets had been called into service to photograph Columbia in orbit on her maiden flight in 1981. On that mission, as soon as the payload bay doors were opened once Columbia reached orbit, the crew and NASA noticed several tiles missing from the area near the shuttle’s tail. It was not public knowledge at the time, but NASA had reached out to the intelligence community to take images of Columbia in orbit and determine if other tiles were missing in critical areas not visible to the crew. How those images were obtained, and what they were able to show, is still classified information.

People who remembered that situation reached out to contacts in the intelligence community and asked if it was possible to take similar images now. Mid-level technical experts in the intelligence community said they would be happy to help. They just needed a formal request from NASA.

In one of the most confounding breakdowns of the management process for STS-107, the MMT refused to issue a formal request for images. In essence, the reasoning was: “You don’t have enough data on the problem to warrant getting the intelligence community involved.” And yet there was no way for the team to gather more data without the intelligence imagery. The imaging capabilities possessed by the intelligence community were highly classified and could not be used as justification for the request, because most of the team was not cleared to hear that information. Trapped in a Catch-22, those who desperately wanted the additional information felt incredibly frustrated at the bureaucratic logjam.

Lower-level engineers at KSC and at Boeing’s shuttle design offices in Huntington Beach, California, adamantly insisted that the foam impact had damaged the RCC. Some refused to certify that the vehicle was safe to come home. The MMT noted and then overruled their objections. The discussions were not even reflected in the MMT’s meeting minutes.