“Don’t you think it’s time you tried to do some work? We really think you’d feel better,” Stangley remembered hearing the pleas of his colleagues—their begging really—that he do something productive, get back in the groove. Their comments had started out as casual suggestions, but more recently had evolved into mandates cleverly disguised in the form of one part concern mixed with three parts “Man, you’d better get it together soon.”
Stangley had stacked his bereavement leave, vacation and sick benefits end to end and, having exhausted them all, was now at risk of ruining his career. No matter how terrifying the prospect of moving forward in the world seemed, Stangley needed to do it.
His first assignment since his wife died had taken him to the Kennedy Space Center, where he attended the STS-107 pre-launch press conference, watched the launch, then wrote an article for the New York Times describing the launch and the mission objectives. Stangley had seen more than 80 shuttle launches in person, so the assignment asked very little from someone with his experience.
Stangley had traveled to the Cape and surrounding areas so often that he and his wife Claire had seriously considered buying a second home in Cocoa Beach. But that turned out to be just an idea, an unrealized dream, something they had talked about long before she became ill.
Stangley had been a mainstay of the science-reporting community for decades and a regular on CNN as their Senior Science Correspondent. He was a familiar face to millions of viewers, who had become accustomed to his use of fancy graphics and models to explain a story. Following the Challenger accident, a grieving nation had looked to him for comfort—they felt he could help them understand what went wrong.
Nearly a year had passed since Stangley’s last television broadcast, longer still since his last newspaper article. He had been gone so long now that no one was asking where he was or what had happened to him; the inquires had stopped. People had moved on.
Columbia was in space, and Stangley had written his article—his work was finished. Now came the hard part: facing the familiar surroundings of Cocoa Beach alone.
For more than 20 years, John and Claire had been coming to Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral. “If I don’t come with you, I’ll never see you,” Claire had often said. Business mixed with pleasure. Like young lovers desperate to see each other, they would find ways to meet during John’s workday, between the assignments, press meetings, and live TV appearances. Claire would pack a lunch and a bottle of 2001 Richard Perry Syrah, their favorite from Napa. Then she’d page him—some romantic text message sent in the midst of a press conference, leaving John’s mind whirling as he figured out a way to make their rendezvous work. But that was long before Claire became ill.
Outside the bathroom door, he could faintly hear the news playing from the hotel TV in the armoire. For once he did not focus on the content. For once he did not talk back to the TV reporters about how their angle was wrong. Instead, he just stood looking at himself in the mirror, his image clarifying in the thinning fog, thinking about the lifeless days he had endured without Claire. One memory after another flashed by like pages of a flip-book and the loneliness came rushing.
He was back to work, it was official. But during the months he had taken off he had grown increasingly sick of the media—so sick of the news, of the headlines, the deadlines, and the racing around.
Chapter 4
Johnson Space Center, Houston
Space Shuttle Program Office
Friday, Jan. 17, 2003
11:05 AM EST
EVEN AT AGE 52, it was obvious Julie Pollard had been blessed by a genetic windfall. She had a mind for numbers, a body made strong and lean from running 20 to 30 miles per week, and a heart swollen with passion for her work. No matter what scale or graph one used to measure her success, she was there at the top, wondering sometimes herself what was fueling her good fortune. In life and in her work, she favored a windward tack, always pushing herself to do more, to stay focused.
She had the requisite brains for her job, graduating at the top of her class, with a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from MIT. Two years later, she had her MBA. But at NASA, brains were common, a given, a requirement. What set her apart in this land of giants was her way of interacting with people, of getting them to do their career-best work on a project with little or minimal guidance. She was so competent in her work, so well respected by those she managed, that her employees often petitioned to be part of her future projects. The assignments varied in scope and complexity, but she handled each one with the same poise and control top management had come to expect from her. Some assignments were quite simple, requiring only that her critical eye reassess an existing program. Other assignments were significantly more complex and challenging, providing a chance for her to show off her management skills. “Oh, I just needed to nudge the right people in the right direction,” would be her humble remark when complimented on her work.
Pollard’s most recent assignment was Program Integration Manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA’s Mission Control. She was responsible for integrating the teams from Kennedy, Johnson and Marshall Space Flight Centers. She also collaborated with outside contractors such as United Space Alliance (USA), a relatively recent joint venture between Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. USA was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Space Shuttle Program.
Pollard acted as the Chair for STS-107’s Mission Management Team (MMT). The team consisted of managers from every major mission component, such as Payload Processing, the Weather Office, Space and Life Sciences, Launch Integration and Safety.
Every shuttle mission was assigned an MMT. Any problems that arose during a mission with any shuttle subsystem, such as hardware issues, electrical problems with the orbiter, problems or concerns with payloads, extravehicular activities—anything that fell outside the authority and responsibility of the Flight Directors at Mission Control—were handled by the MMT. Pollard remembered a colleague in her early years at NASA explaining that the flight directors made sure the orbiter stayed on course, and the Mission Management teams made sure that an astronaut’s time in space was well spent—that he or she completed mission objectives.
Pollard was standing at her desk, arranging her final thoughts before her next meeting, gathering some papers she needed, when her computer’s e-mail application sounded its new-message tone and forced itself to the forefront. She was far too compulsive to leave the e-mail until after the meeting. She checked her watch again.
Still time to read this one e-mail.
She moved closer to the monitor to read the header. The message was marked “Urgent, Open Immediately!”
Original Message
From: Brown, K. (Ken)(KSC)(NASA)
Sent: Friday, Jan. 17, 2003 11:07 A.M. EST
To: Pollard, J. (Julie)(JSC)(NASA)
Cc: Dept. Heads, United Space Alliance, Boeing
Subject: L+1 Report—STS-107 Debris Strike
Attachment: Video clip from launch camera E208
Launch + 1 Day Report
Intercenter Photo Working Group
Preliminary high-resolution photo analysis of launch revealed that at T-plus-approximately-81 seconds a large piece of debris thought to be insulating foam from the -Y ET bipod strut broke loose and subsequently struck the lower leading edge of the orbiter’s left wing. Upon contact with the wing, in the area of transition from chine to main wing, the debris appears to fragment on impact, showering the lower aspect of the wing in varisized particles and shards. No debris is seen traveling over the upper wing surface.
Further analysis is in progress and will include estimates of debris size, impact velocity and angularity.
Due to limited imaging for this debris strike, the lateness of the strike during ascent and the apparent size of the debris, outside imaging in the form of ground-based or satellite-based national assets is highly recommended to rule out safety-of-flight issues.
Ken Brown
Chair, Intercent
er Photo Working Group
Pollard read the e-mail twice before swallowing what felt like a size-12 tube sock in her throat. She selected print using a well-practiced keyboard shortcut, then quickly hit the return key.
Shit! You’ve gotta be frickin’ kidding me! Now what?
Her eyes darted over to her laser printer, where the status light was already flashing. Pollard tapped her fingers on the printer as her brain began to break down the e-mail message.
“Come on, come on.”
What would the crew expect? What’s my next step?
The promise of an easy mission had ended just that fast.
Finally, a small motor inside the printer awoke and along with it a series of gears and rollers. In her mind, too, whirring away like a well-tuned machine, she imagined the vital structures of Columbia’s wing: the reinforced leading edge, the protective tiles on the underside of the wing and the left main landing-gear door that protected a pair of virgin Michelins pressurized with gaseous nitrogen to a rock-hard 350 psi.
She grabbed the printed e-mail on her way out of her office just as her mind reached the end of the correct path. Like a fireman waking to the sound of a call, Pollard knew exactly what she needed to do.
Data, data, data. The debris strike must be objectified.
She needed to form a tiger team.
The debris strike e-mail propagated throughout NASA and the space community like the cargo of frenetic scout-ants.
For as many who heard the news it seemed there were an equal number of opinions, some based more on fact and experience than others, about what could happen to Columbia if no further action were taken.
Every engineering division at NASA, whether electrical, structural or some other discipline, viewed the debris strike from its own studied perspective. Some thought it was simply a turnaround issue, NASA’s term for something that needed to be addressed and fixed before an orbiter’s next mission, but not something that posed an immediate risk to either crew or spacecraft. They argued that in the past 112 shuttle flights, debris shed from the external fuel tank had never been shown to be a safety-of-flight issue.
Experts from NASA’s structural-engineering division, on the other hand, wrote lengthy e-mails describing just how awful it could be if the debris had in fact penetrated Columbia’s thermal protection system. They predicted that if the reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panels of Columbia’s wing were breached, the superheated plasma gases of reentry would penetrate the wing, melting the wing superstructure, which in turn would lead to catastrophic loss of crew and craft.
At this point, though, no one knew for sure.
Chapter 5
Cocoa Beach, Florida
Friday, Jan. 17, 2003
1:16 PM EST
JOHN STANGLEY DONNED the white hotel-supplied terry cloth bathrobe, grabbed the remote to turn off the TV, and then sat down in a chair near the window. He moaned all the while as if he’d had to summon all his physical resources to complete the simple task. Except for the low-level rushing of white noise in his ears, an apparent side effect of the antidepressant he was taking, there was a wonderful silence. It was almost restful, magical. His eyes were swollen like a prizefighter’s from hours of crying, his vision blurry still at the edges from tears, but, by the grace of God, he thought, this last bout of crying had finally passed.
He took the newspaper from the small table beside his chair, found the article he’d written, and began reading:
16-Day International Shuttle Mission Begins
By John Stangley
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida.
Shortly before 11 A.M. EST yesterday, Space Shuttle Columbia roared off launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on her 28th flight, in what NASA has described as an uneventful launch. For this mission, designated STS-107 (STS, short for NASA’s Shuttle Transportation System), Columbia is carrying an international crew of seven, which includes two women and a first-ever Israeli astronaut. The crew will conduct experiments around the clock in two shifts for the duration of the scheduled 16-day mission.
“STS-107 was delayed 13 times over more than two years—she’s finally off the ground!” Gerald Conner, a spokesperson for NASA, told reporters in a post-launch press conference Thursday. “Some of the delays were caused by the shifting of the mission schedule to allow higher-priority missions to launch first. Other delays were due to extended maintenance work on Columbia, which took six months longer than we expected and, finally, we found flowline cracks on several main engines and had to perform some last-minute flowliner (the main-engine fuel lines) repairs on Columbia’s main engines.”
The mission’s sole purpose is to serve as a floating laboratory, where the crew can conduct research in a microgravity environment. There are no space walks planned for this mission—none of the familiar activities such as satellite launch/repair or construction work on the space station.
Following STS-109 in March 2002, Columbia’s last mission, the space plane spent several months in California for refurbishment and modifications, and was then flown back to the Kennedy Space Center piggyback-style on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft—NASA’s specially modified Boeing 747 airplane.
While in California, the robotic arm was removed from Columbia’s payload bay to make room for SPACEHAB Inc.’s Research Double Module (RDM). The RDM is a pressurized work environment mounted inside Columbia’s payload bay that is accessible during orbit by the crew via a tunnel extending from Columbia’s mid-deck into the payload bay.
The module measures 20 feet long, 14 feet wide, and 11 feet high. The RDM, while significantly increasing Columbia’s living space, provides a space-station-class microgravity laboratory, allowing continued research in space during International Space Station construction.
Nearly 82 percent of the RDM’s 9,000-pound capacity will be used by NASA, while the remaining 18 percent has been marketed by SPACEHAB Inc. to international organizations such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency and some commercial users.
Astronauts of STS-107 will conduct some 80 experiments designed by more than 70 international scientists in the areas of human health and astronaut safety, advanced technology and Earth and space sciences.
Experiments will focus on the effects of microgravity on the human body—specifically, the loss of muscle and bone mass and dizziness, all of which continue to limit extended space travel.
The ESA’s Advanced Respiratory Monitoring System will measure the astronauts’ lungs, heart and metabolic functions while in space to determine the effects of microgravity on these systems. In addition, ESA’s BioBox, a square-shaped experiment module containing several biological experiments, will investigate the effects of weightlessness and the space environment on microorganisms.
Another experiment known as the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) will measure atmospheric aerosols over the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert. MEIDEX will be conducted by STS-107’s Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon.
The crew’s preparation for this mission began in July 2000. General training required more than 4,800 hours. To learn the specifics of the mission, the crew members spent an additional 3,500 hundred hours studying and training with the laboratory equipment housed in the RDM of Columbia’s payload bay.
To facilitate execution of all the planned experiments during the mission, the seven-member crew of Columbia was divided into two teams, with each team to work twelve-hour shifts. Astronauts Husband, Chawla, Clark and Ramon will comprise the Red team, working during the predawn and daytime hours. McCool, Brown and Anderson of the Blue team will work during the evening and overnight hours.
Currently onboard the International Space Station (ISS) is the Exposition 6 crew, comprised of Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit. This morning the three astronauts received a live video uplink of Columbia’s launch from Mission Control in Houston.
Today marks the 53rd day on board the ISS for the Expedition 6 astronauts. The ISS is currently in orbit at 240 statute miles
above Earth, at an inclination to the equator of 51.6 degrees, while Columbia is at an altitude of approximately 178 statute miles and is inclined 39 degrees relative to the equator.
John Stangley is a freelance writer who appears periodically in the New York Times on topics of Space &Technology.
He glanced at the clock on the bedside table and suddenly the silence of his hotel room was shattered. Amidst a pile of coins, a half-eaten roll of Wint-O-green Lifesavers, his watch and wallet, was Stangley’s Blackberry, which came to life without any warning, vibrating and chattering like a fully wound set of mechanical teeth. By the third cycle, he remembered. About three weeks ago while planning this trip, he’d made dinner plans by e-mail with a friend, an acquaintance really. He got up and grabbed the pager, certain there would be an e-mail message confirming tonight’s dinner plans.
He read the e-mail message out loud, then read it again and yet again. The message was about his dinner plans, yes, but that was hardly the issue. The essence of the message had awakened Stangley’s brain to a higher state—each time he reread the e-mail, there was increased clarity. He tried to remember when he last felt such an interest in his work. Had it been more than a year ago? Before Claire died? Before she was even sick?
It was like his brain had been off and now it was on. Or maybe he had traveled back in time somehow, to the peak of his career, back when he had enjoyed a commanding control over his life, back when he was flush with ambition.
Launch on Need Page 3