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

John Tribe, “Forever Remembered,” unpublished personal recollections on the STS-107 mission.

Kim Anderson email, February 4, 2003, accessed at www.ars-fla.com/Mainpages/Spaceflight/STS-107/KimAnderson-STS-107.htm.

Within hours of assuming the role of NASA administrator in December 2001, O’Keefe asked his senior leaders to brief him on what would happen if something were to go wrong. NASA formalized a new contingency plan in November 2002, and revised it in January 2003, less than a month before the Columbia accident. O’Keefe later said in an interview with Jonathan Ward, “When you’re in a situation like that, I don’t know many people that can stand there and be as ice-cold as it takes to actually think through the proper series of those kinds of events. You can tell the difference between those who have an organized way of proceeding, versus those that say, ‘What in the hell do we do now?’ The one thing I didn’t have to worry about on February 1, 2003, was what we were going to do next. The guy standing next to me on the runway has the binder that says, “Here’s the plan, and here’s how we do it, starting with: ‘Item 1. Here’s who we need to call and here’s how we’re going to set up a mishap investigation.’”

NASA, NASA Accident Investigation Team Final Report (Washington, DC: NASA Headquarters, August 22, 2003), iv. The fourteen organizations included the Columbia Task Force, the Headquarters Contingency Action Team, the NASA Accident Investigation Team, the Mishap Investigation Team, the Reconstruction Team, the Orbiter Vehicle Engineering Working Group, the Emergency Operations Center, the Data and Records Handling Working Group, the Early Sightings Assessment Team, the Systems Integration Working Group, the External Tank Working Group, the Space Shuttle Main Engine Working Group, the Reusable Solid Rocket Motor Working Group, and the Solid Rocket Booster Working Group.

“Grand Jury Indicts Man for Stealing Shuttle Toilet,” Lufkin Daily News (Lufkin, TX), May 8, 2003 ( www.lufkindailynews.com/news/newsfd/auto/feed/news/2003/05/08/1052368037.00303.3371.4691.html). The tank was recovered on May 7 in a strange turn of events, and its alleged thief became the fifth person to be indicted in East Texas for stealing debris from the shuttle. Eyewitnesses to his arrest stated that, by day, he was involved in the search for crew remains. He then allegedly went back to bring debris home from the field at night, hiding items under clothing in his trailer. He also had a stash of pyrotechnic devices—he did not know what they were or how dangerous they were—under his bed. Rumor held that he had a romantic encounter with a female searcher, and when his wife learned of the affair, she notified local authorities of the stolen material in their home. Accused of withholding the “compactor tank assembly” from NASA’s recovery efforts, he was also indicted by a grand jury on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. In August 2003, he was acquitted of the theft charge in exchange for pleading guilty to the firearms charge.

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.

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.

Jan Amen email, February 4, 2003.

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.

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.

Shafer and LeConey, “Legal Issues,” 42.

NASA, Space Shuttle Columbia Material Recovery, Report CB-QMS-024 (Houston, TX: NASA Johnson Space Center Flight Crew Operations Directorate, September, 2004, unpublished), 2.

NASA, Report CB-QMS-024 , 2.

Out of respect for the crew’s families, NASA has never released details about the identity, location, or condition of any crew member’s remains during the recovery.

Greg Cohrs, “Hemphill Recovery of the STS-107 Columbia, Notes of Greg Cohrs, May 28 through June 16, 2003,” unpublished, 4.

Michael Cabbage and Robyn Suriano, “Fatal Return: A Stunned NASA Searches for Answers,” Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, FL), February 2, 2003, 1–20.

Greg Cohrs email to Jonathan Ward, September 27, 2016.

Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA), “FEMA Emergency Operations Vehicle (EOV),” fact sheet, undated [2003 or earlier].

Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 34.

Cohrs, “Notes,” 4.

Jeff Williams, interviewed by Connie Hodges, Center for Regional Heritage, Stephen F. Austin State University, March 24, 2003, digital.sfasu.edu/cdm/search/collection/col/searchterm/audio/field/title/mode/all/conn/and/order/nosort.

Greg Cohrs email to Jonathan Ward, December 19, 2016.

FEMA, “FEMA Puts Federal Resources into Action to Assist State and Local Authorities in Search, Find and Secure Mission for Columbia Debris,” news release HQ-03-029, February 2, 2003.

Cohrs, “Notes,” 5.

Cohrs, “Notes,” 5.

Dom Gorie began alternating in this role with Horowitz several days into the recovery period.

US Navy, US Navy Salvage Report, Space Shuttle Columbia , Report S0300-B5-RPT-01 (Washington, DC: US Navy, Naval Sea Systems Command, September 2003), 1-7.

Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 21.

Paul Keller, writer-editor, Searching for and Recovering the Space Shuttle Columbia: Documenting the USDA Forest Service Role in This Unprecedented ‘All-Risk’ Incident, February 1 through May 10, 2003, www.fireleadership.gov/toolbox/lead_in_cinema_library/downloads/challenges/Searching_Recovering_Shuttle_Columbia_2003_Paul%20Keller.pdf.

Byron Starr, Finding Heroes: The Search for Columbia’s Astronauts (Vancouver, Canada: Liaison Press, 2006), 50.

NASA, “NASA Asks for Help with Columbia Investigation,” news release H03-033, February 2, 2003.

FEMA, “FEMA Puts Federal Resources into Action to Assist State and Local Authorities in Search, Find and Secure Mission for Columbia Debris,” news release HQ-03-029, February 2, 2003. This was a suite of Airborne Spectral Photo-imaging of Environmental Contaminants Technology (ASPECT) sensors mounted in a twin-engine aircraft.