Bringing Columbia Home

by Michael D. Leinbach

  The earliest possible launch date was February 11, assuming that Atlantis would not be equipped with its remote manipulator arm. If the arm was going to be installed—and it was almost certainly needed for the rescue mission—the earliest launch date slipped to February 13.

  If all went well, Atlantis would have rendezvoused with Columbia and kept station with her, with the ships’ open payload bays facing each other. The rescue crew of four would run a tether between the two ships, and then bring Columbia’s crew over to Atlantis, one by one.

  Once the transfer was complete, Atlantis would head home with eleven people. Four of them would have to be strapped to the deck in the crew module during reentry, since the shuttle only carried seven seats. NASA would command Columbia to reenter the atmosphere, timing the maneuver to have the ship burn up over a remote area of the South Pacific.

  If everything went according to plan, Columbia’s crew would have had about a two-day margin in their consumables. They would have been in orbit almost a month by that point.

  Everything hinged on making the momentous decision on January 23, following the decision to conserve the air scrubbers on the fourth day of the mission.

  And remember that the request for intelligence imagery surfaced on January 22. Even if the request had been approved at that point, we wouldn’t have had the pictures in time to make an informed decision. Furthermore, the reduction of the crew’s normal activities to conserve consumables would have made a space walk unfeasible in the first place.

  It had been already too late for a rescue.

  —

  Repairing Columbia in orbit was an even more uncertain proposition. The crew lacked suitable repair materials or equipment. Columbia did not have its remote manipulator arm installed, which would have been needed to support astronauts during a space walk. Even if by some miracle the crew could pack the hole in the wing with ice and fashion a metal cover for it—two options that engineers explored—it appeared highly unlikely that this would sufficiently protect the ship during reentry.

  When we saw the analyses, there was no grumbling, but there was grief. We couldn’t save the ship. Columbia was doomed, no matter what. Maybe we could have saved the crew. But there were so many what-ifs and assumptions, so many things that had to go completely differently from the very first hours of the mission. Would it have been successful? I don’t know. We never even had the chance to try.

  As much as it hurt people to think about the remote possibility of saving Columbia’s crew, the study helped prompt discussions on how to save a future crew of a damaged shuttle.

  Missions to the ISS had the advantage of delivering the crew to a place where they could wait for a subsequent mission to retrieve them or go home via the Soyuz. Assuming an injured shuttle could dock to the ISS, its crew could await a rescue mission for ninety days or more. This “safe haven” capability was one of the key factors that led NASA to approve the resumption of shuttle flights.5

  The issue was more problematic for servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is in a different orbit than the ISS.6 Because of the laws of orbital mechanics, the amount of fuel needed to move the space shuttle between the orbits of Hubble and the ISS was far greater than the orbiter could carry. The ISS could not be a safe haven for a Hubble mission. Without a rescue capability, Sean O’Keefe felt that the risks to human life did not justify prolonging Hubble’s life by a couple of years. On January 16, 2004, he canceled the final planned Hubble servicing mission.7

  Mike Griffin replaced O’Keefe as NASA administrator in April 2005. Griffin believed it was so important to extend Hubble’s life and capabilities that he was willing to reinstate the servicing mission—provided the external tank foam shedding issues were resolved and adequate crew rescue capability existed. KSC and JSC used the Columbia rescue scenario to design a one-time rescue mission that could back up the Hubble servicing mission. Griffin formally approved the servicing mission after the successful completion of STS-121 in July 2006.8

  On May 11, 2009, Atlantis was poised for launch to the Hubble from Pad 39A at Kennedy. Standing on Pad 39B two miles to the north was Endeavour, ready to go into orbit if any problems occurred with Atlantis. For the first and only time, NASA had two shuttles in launch countdown simultaneously. We were ready to launch Endeavour one day after Atlantis if necessary. Tremendous dedication and work went into getting us to this dual-launch posture. Fortunately—like many other things in the space business—this contingency capability was assured but never needed.

  Atlantis’s flight went flawlessly, so the rescue mission never flew. Atlantis’s crew successfully prolonged Hubble’s life and upgraded its instrument package.

  In a roundabout way, what we learned from the Columbia accident had once again contributed to the advancement of scientific discovery.

  —

  Columbia’s STS-107 accident did not end the Space Shuttle Program. However, it informed the decisions that did. As brilliant as the space shuttle’s technology was, the vehicle could never be made acceptably safe to risk further flights after the International Space Station was completed.

  Even before the CAIB issued its report, debates about shuttle safety raged within NASA. “That is the pattern in any aftermath of a cathartic event like this,” Sean O’Keefe said. “There will be plenty of things that are emerging now and will continue to emerge that will motivate a change in the way we look at doing business.”9

  Fundamental questions resurfaced. Did the benefits of sending humans into space outweigh the risk and expense? Maxime Faget—the legendary engineer who designed America’s Mercury space capsule and managed the design of every other American manned spacecraft—felt that the country should immediately halt all human spaceflights until a safer vehicle could be built.10

  Had it not been for America’s commitments to its international partners to complete the ISS, the Space Shuttle Program could very well have ended with the loss of Columbia. Building the ISS was a matter of international treaty.11 We had to see through an endeavor into which the world community had invested tremendous time and resources. Without the shuttle, there was no other way to get the ISS modules into orbit and assemble the station.

  Some within NASA naturally felt hesitant to take further risks after the accident. Dave King said, “It shakes your confidence. It shakes every part of you, when you’re part of making decisions that kill your friends and make your friends suffer.” Overcoming the grief and the mood of shared guilt for having let the crew down proved a tough management challenge. Leaders concentrated on rebuilding people’s faith and pride in their work. Ultimately, a driving motivation was the perceived obligation to Columbia’s crew to carry their mission forward—to ensure that their sacrifice had not been in vain.

  In May 2003, NASA named former astronaut Thomas Stafford and retired shuttle astronaut Richard Covey to head an independent task force to evaluate our plans for returning the shuttle to flight. The Stafford-Covey Task Force would provide an ongoing, unbiased assessment of how NASA was implementing the CAIB’s recommendations. As the time for the next mission approached, the task force would advise the NASA administrator whether they felt everything had been done to make the shuttle safe to fly again.12

  While the space shuttle was being recertified for flight, NASA moved forward with a new “Vision for Space Exploration,” announced by President George W. Bush on January 14, 2004. The Vision called for completing the ISS and retiring the space shuttle by 2010. Meanwhile, NASA would develop the new Constellation Program, which included expendable launch vehicles and the Crew Exploration Vehicle (Orion), which was a capsule like Apollo, but on a larger scale. Crews would begin flying on Constellation in 2014. Constellation would return Americans to the Moon by 2020 and put them on Mars in the not-too-distant future.

  Announcing the end of the Space Shuttle Program felt like a crushing blow to many in the NASA community. We had planned to fly the orbiters until at least 2020. Now only a handful more than twenty miss
ions would be left before we retired the shuttle. United Space Alliance’s Larry Ostarly said, “Quite frankly, I don’t know what made me sadder—that we lost Columbia, or that it cost the program.”

  —

  In late 2003, program managers and leaders at the NASA centers began identifying the changes to hardware, processes, and practices to address the findings in the CAIB report, as well as other findings that came to light during the investigation. Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center reeducated the workforce in the proper procedures for applying foam to the external tank. Johnson Space Center engineers developed hardware and techniques for inspecting and repairing a shuttle in orbit. The first several days of a mission would now include a complete inspection of the shuttle’s heatshield, both by the crew on the shuttle and by astronauts inside the International Space Station, who would photograph the shuttle as it approached. We overhauled our inspection and processing procedures at Kennedy and significantly improved the tracking camera coverage for future launches. Redesigned flight plans allowed launching only in daylight hours, to allow cameras to monitor the ascent phase of the mission. Critical phases of reentry could fly only over unpopulated areas. Mission Management Teams would be required to meet every day the shuttle was in orbit, no matter how well things seemed to be going. Roy Bridges established NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center at Langley Research Center, providing a resource any engineer could call with a concern that they believed needed to be examined.

  Shuttle Program managers implemented sweeping changes to address the organizational culture issues the CAIB identified. Mission managers would be required to attend specialized training sessions about how to foster full and open debate on any issue. Searching out dissenting opinions became the norm and was embraced throughout the program. No longer would lower-level employees feel reluctant to speak up if they had an issue or alternative opinion.

  I can recall post-Columbia program-level meetings where we could not adjourn until at least one dissenting opinion was presented. It was a little awkward, but it was the right thing to do—to really show the team we meant what we said about open discussions.

  Implementing the space shuttle safety recommendations took two years. Meanwhile, the International Space Station remained manned, albeit with small crews who launched to and returned from the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

  Eileen Collins and her crew trained for the “return to flight” STS-114 mission of Discovery, which would take a logistics module loaded with cargo to the station. The crew’s primary mission, however, was to demonstrate improvements in shuttle safety.

  Collins had intended that her mission—originally scheduled for March 2003—would be her final one. She planned to retire from the astronaut corps that summer and move to Florida with her husband, who was a pilot for Delta Airlines. When the Columbia accident occurred, she knew that her plans would have to change. “It would just look bad if the commander of the next mission retired, no matter what the reason. People would think I had lost faith or was worried about my safety,” she said. “I was not going to do that to NASA, no matter what my personal plans were, because I had confidence we could fly our mission just fine.”

  NASA invited Roger and Belinda Gay, Marsha Cooper, Terry Lane, and many of the people from East Texas who had been so helpful in the Columbia recovery effort to come to KSC and witness Discovery’s launch. It would be a fitting tribute for these people to see the shuttle fly again as a result of their hard work and sacrifices. The group toured Kennedy’s facilities, but their hope to see the shuttle lift off were dashed when a fuel tank sensor problem scrubbed the planned July 13, 2005, launch. They had to return home before our next launch attempt.

  We could not locate the cause of the sensor problem. After a week, engineers determined it was not critical to flight safety, so we set a new launch date of July 26.

  As the countdown came out of the T minus nine–minute hold, I cleared Discovery for launch and told the crew, “On behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply in what we do—good luck, Godspeed, and have a little fun up there!”

  Discovery finally lifted off the launchpad—907 days after the Columbia accident.

  Trouble ensued almost immediately.

  A large bird struck the fuel tank less than three seconds after liftoff—which fortunately caused no damage to the vehicle. A small piece of tile fell off the edge of the shuttle’s nose landing gear door some time before the solid rocket boosters separated. One edge of a thermal blanket under the commander’s cockpit window also came loose. And to everyone’s horror, the external tank shed several large pieces of foam, one of which was about half the size of the piece that fatally wounded Columbia. The largest piece fortunately missed Discovery, but another piece of foam struck the shuttle’s right wing.

  On-orbit inspection of Discovery’s heatshield revealed only minimal damage. Wind tunnel tests showed that the loose insulation blanket would not cause a problem. However, the extent of foam shedding from the external tank was absolutely unacceptable, since the issue had supposedly been fixed.

  While Discovery was still in space, NASA declared a moratorium on future shuttle flights until the foam shedding problem was resolved.

  The mission itself went smoothly. Discovery docked with the ISS and delivered much-needed cargo and supplies. In three space walks, the crew demonstrated shuttle tile repair techniques, replaced a failed gyroscope on the ISS, and installed an external stowage platform for ISS tools and equipment. Then astronaut Stephen Robinson conducted an actual repair on the shuttle, removing two gap fillers that were protruding from between tiles on Discovery’s belly. It was the first time an astronaut had ever ventured underneath the shuttle during a space walk. “Other than the launch, that was the riskiest thing we did on this mission, because we hadn’t trained for it,” Collins said.

  Columbia’s crew remained in the hearts and minds of the return-to-flight mission. The STS-114 crew had redesigned their crew patch to incorporate the STS-107 mission emblem. Collins kept a photo of the Columbia crew on display in Discovery’s flight deck throughout the mission. “Whenever we were up on the flight deck, we had that crew with us,” she said.

  On August 3, the shuttle and ISS crews gathered to send birthday greetings to Matthew Husband, son of Columbia’s late commander. The crews also read a short memorial service composed by astronaut Andy Thomas, entitled “Exploration—The fire of the human spirit, a tribute to fallen astronauts and cosmonauts.”13 Collins concluded the service saying, “For all our lost colleagues, we leave you with this prayer, often spoken for those who have sacrificed themselves for all of us:

  They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:

  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  We will remember them.”

  Discovery was supposed to land at Kennedy Space Center on August 8. Bad weather at KSC forced NASA to wave off two landing opportunities that day and two the next day. NASA finally directed Discovery to land at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

  Collins and her crew felt absolutely confident about the final phase of flight after the extensive inspections they conducted during the mission. “As a habit, I called out Mach numbers so that the astronauts in the mid-deck knew where we were in the reentry profile,” she said. “None of us said anything about it, but we were all aware when we passed the airspeed and altitude where Columbia had her accident.” Collins brought Discovery in for a landing and called “Wheels stop” at 8:12 Eastern Time on the morning of August 9, 2005.

  A month later, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans.14 Shuttle external tank assembly operations at NASA’s nearby Michoud Assembly Facility were suspended for nearly two months while NASA repaired wind and water damage to the facility. In November, NASA inspected one of the external tanks that had twice been filled with and drained of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. New scanning techniques revealed cracks
deep in the insulating foam that were not visible on the surface. It appeared the foam cracked as the tank contracted and expanded due to thermal changes. NASA realized that it was an engineering issue—not human error in applying the foam—which had caused the foam shedding problem.15 Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale said shortly thereafter, “I flew to New Orleans within a few days, and called an all-hands meeting where I publicly apologized to the foam technicians. They had not caused the loss of Columbia through poor workmanship. Those guys were reeling from the hurricane’s devastation to their homes and community, and had lived with nearly three years of blame.”16 NASA could now make the needed design changes to the tank.

  STS-121—the second post-Columbia return-to-flight mission—launched on July 4, 2006. The external tank only lost a minor amount of foam, and it occurred after the most critical time during ascent to orbit. The flaw that had doomed Columbia was finally fixed. Much to many people’s amusement, bird droppings seen on the shuttle’s right wing several days before launch were detected in the on-orbit inspections.17 Otherwise, the mission was nearly flawless.

  The shuttle had come roaring back.

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  Between 2006 and 2011, the three remaining shuttles in America’s fleet flew twenty more missions after STS-121. Their crews completed the International Space Station and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope one final time. There were no other accidents or close calls during the rest of the Shuttle Program. NASA’s diligence following the Columbia accident paid off.

  The Constellation Program had been making slow and steady progress, but its only flights were a test of the Ares I-X rocket in 2009 and a test of the launch escape system in 2010. As has happened all too often with NASA’s budgets over the years, the agency did not receive the funding it needed to realize its ambitious vision. In 2009, a presidential commission reported Constellation to be so far behind schedule, over budget, and underfunded that it was impossible for the program to meet any of its goals. The administration removed Constellation from NASA’s fiscal year 2010 budget, effectively canceling the program. Meanwhile, NASA had already been moving forward with the termination of the Space Shuttle Program after STS-134.