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

Copyright © 2018 by Michael D. Leinbach and Jonathan H. Ward

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First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Leinbach, Michael D., author. | Ward, Jonathan H., author.

Title: Bringing Columbia home : the final mission of a lost space shuttle and her crew / Michael D. Leinbach, former launch director, John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA, and Jonathan H. Ward ; foreword by astronaut Robert Crippen ; epilogue by astronaut Eileen Collins.

Description: First edition. | New York : Arcade Publishing, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017046190 (print) | LCCN 2017050797 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628728521 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628728514 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Columbia (Spacecraft)–Accidents. | Space Shuttles–Accidents–United States. | Space vehicles–Recovery. | Space vehicle accidents–United States. | Astronauts–Accidents–United States.

Classification: LCC TL867 (ebook) | LCC TL867 .L45 2017 (print) | DDC 363.12/4–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046190

Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Front cover photograph: AP

Printed in the United States of America

Challenger carried a crew of eight astronauts on the October/November 1985 flight of STS-61A. Atlantis also carried eight astronauts and cosmonauts on its return from the Russian Mir space station on STS-71 in 1995. Throughout the rest of the Space Shuttle Program, crew complement was limited to seven astronauts.

Tariq Malik, “NASA’s Space Shuttle By the Numbers: 30 Years of a Spaceflight Icon,” Space.com, March, 9, 2011, www.space.com/12376-nasa-space-shuttle-program-facts-statistics.html.

Shuttle mission numbers were assigned based on their original order in the launch manifest. STS-107 was the 107th assigned flight in the Space Shuttle Program. Changes in launch priorities and availability of hardware occasionally changed the order in which the missions flew. STS-107 was the 113th shuttle mission to fly. In informal conversation, missions were usually just referred to by their number—in this case, “one-oh-seven.”

NASA, “Sixteen Minutes from Home: A Tribute to the Crew of STS-107,” KSC Web Studio (Kennedy Space Center, FL) video, February 2003.

Each one of the four orbiters was in a constant state of flux—undergoing maintenance, being “de-configured” after returning from a mission, being prepared for an upcoming mission, being tested, being stacked, sitting at the launchpad, flying a mission, or being upgraded for safety and/or performance reasons. There were three hangars and four orbiters, occasionally requiring one of the vehicles to sit in an empty bay in the Vehicle Assembly Building while awaiting space in a hangar.

The STS-107 crew also ran an interface test in June 2001, before the STS-109 mission was moved ahead of STS-107 in the launch schedule. STS-107’s experiments were removed from the payload bay, replaced with Hubble Space Telescope servicing equipment, and then placed back into the payload bay after Columbia returned from the STS-109 flight.

Columbia ’s refit would have involved installing an air lock in the payload bay ( Columbia was the only shuttle with its air lock inside the crew compartment) and removing much of the test instrumentation that added weight to the vehicle. This would have included removing the Orbiter Experiments (OEX) recorder, which was to prove crucial to investigating the accident.

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.

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.

Steve Stitch, email message to Rick Husband and Willie McCool, subject “INFO: Possible PAO Event Question,” January 23, 2003, www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/columbia/107_emails/foamemails.doc.

Evelyn Husband and Donna VanLiere, High Calling: The Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Commander Rick Husband (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 163.

A study managed by LeRoy Cain subsequently determined that even if it were possible to jettison the payload bay contents and unneeded consumables on the ship, the maximum temperature reduction on the wing leading edges was at best only 7 percent (“Entry Options Tiger Team,” NASA Mission Operations Directorate, Flight Director Office, April 22, 2003).

NASA, STS-107 Shuttle Press Kit (Houston, TX: NASA, December 16, 2002), 17.

NASA added the Inflight Crew Escape System to space shuttles after the Challenger accident. Starting when the shuttle was at about thirty thousand feet in altitude, the astronauts could depressurize the crew module, jettison the hatch, and then extend an escape pole through the opening in the fuselage. One by one, the astronauts would hang a strap on the pole and slide out through the hatch. Their individual parachutes would open once they were clear of the shuttle. It took about ninety seconds to get the crew out this way, by which time the orbiter was at an altitude of ten thousand feet (“Everybody Out!” NASA Educator Feature, https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Everybody_Out.html). This process would occur over the ocean, where the shuttle would be ditched.

NASA, Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report SP-2008-565 (Houston, TX: NASA Johnson Space Center, 2008), 1–29.