“Atlantis, Houston, for the EVA crew.”
Mullen gave Garrett a thumbs-up and Garrett responded with the same.
“Houston, this is Garrett. Mullen and I are ready, over.”
“Okay, you guys are almost done. The EMUs are ready in Atlantis’s airlock. All you need to do now is take them to Columbia so the commander and pilot can suit up.”
“Roger that Houston, two to go!”
“Oh, and as a reminder once again, tether in ASAP.”
“Roger, Houston, we’re almost back to the slide wire. We’ll tether in upon arrival.”
Garrett and Mullen maneuvered themselves down into Atlantis’s payload bay and as soon as they reached the slide wire they connected their retractable tethers.
Garrett arrived at the airlock first and peered down through the 4-inch-diameter airlock window. The two empty EMU suits were floating in the airlock, not limp and lifeless, but inflated—two arms, two legs, a helmet, and a trunk with life-sized girth. The suits were empty, but took on human shape after being powered up and pressurized. This prevented water in the suits from freezing during the trip between ships.
Mullen took a drink from his water pouch, then called Mission Control.
“Houston,” he paused, swallowing another sip of water. “Mullen here. Garrett and I are in position outside the airlock waiting for airlock depress.”
“Roger that, stand by for airlock depress.”
Chapter 67
On Columbia
WITH THE GENTLE PUSH of one foot, Columbia’s commander sailed expertly up from the mid-deck, through the interdeck passageway, to the overhead windows of the flight deck. He stopped there to gaze down at the spectacle outside.
A dark sky so black it didn’t seem real filled the perimeter of the window frame. In center frame, Atlantis, with wings and payload bay doors splayed, glistened in a bath of sunlight. Directly below Atlantis was Earth, rendered in a colorful clarity he’d not seen before. He thought to raise a hand to shield his eyes from the light, but the image held him still. Atlantis, the blessed rescue ship, beckoned. She was ready to take him.
On a rope between the two orbiters, Columbia’s fifth crew member was on his way to Atlantis, assisted by Garrett and Mullen. The commander smiled; the rescue of his crew was going well.
“Columbia, Houston—for the commander.”
“Houston, Columbia,” the commander responded, reluctant to be pulled from a rare personal moment. He pushed away from the windows and maneuvered down to his seat on the flight deck. He knew why they were calling. Columbia could not be salvaged. She’d flown her last mission. And now the commander had the unenviable task of setting her switches so that Mission Control could command Columbia from the ground. Then later, once Atlantis was home safely, Mission Control would command a deorbit burn of Columbia and she would start her fall, quickly to become consumed by the friction of reentry, her remains falling as broiling metallic rain into the South Pacific Ocean.
He fastened his seatbelt so his hands would be free to work. “I’m ready for you,” Columbia’s commander told Mission Control.
“Okay, we have a number of switch configurations we need you to set for us.”
“Roger, Houston. Call ’em out.”
It was impossible for an orbiter to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and land without a crew aboard. Mission Control could command some of the systems from the ground, but not all. It could not start up the auxiliary power units, for example; thus the hydraulic pumps would be inoperable and therefore the hydraulically controlled flight surfaces such as rudder, elevons and speed brakes would be inoperable. Neither could Mission Control remotely lower an orbiter’s landing gear. In the case of Columbia, though, with her damaged wing, the orbiter could never make it back to Earth intact, with or without a crew.
“Set OMS ENG left/right to arm/press,” called the CapCom.
The commander reached for instrument panel C3U, flipped the switches, then called out the confirmation, “OMS engines left/right armed and pressurized.”
“Left OMS ENG VLV to on.”
“Okay, left orbital maneuvering system engine valve on.”
“Right OMS ENG VLV to on.”
“Okay, right OMS engine valve on.”
The commander and Mission Control continued in a similar manner until all the necessary switches aboard Columbia were set and Columbia’s general-purpose computer was configured to be commanded remotely from the ground.
“Okay, Columbia’s all yours,” the commander said. He caught his breath audibly, then repeated, “she’s all yours now.”
“We copy, Columbia… thanks ah… for the handoff,” the Cap-Com said, pausing as he spoke, searching for something more meaningful to say—something that might ease the burden he sensed everyone was feeling.
The networks stayed live for the entire rescue mission, breaking away only briefly for news updates, but always with a split screen. Whatever was happening at NASA, whatever was happening with America’s rescue mission, never left television screens.
John Stangley had been listening closely to the exchange between Columbia’s commander and the CapCom, and when he heard the CapCom say, “We copy, Columbia, thanks for the handoff,” Stangley knew the moment he’d been waiting for, the next historic space moment, was just seconds away.
He quickly motioned to his producer, who’d been primed for Stangley’s cue. She immediately cut back to a full-screen image of NASA’s feed and brought the audio up. NASA’s current feed was of Mission Control, specifically of the CapCom sitting at his desk. His face was a portrait of solemnity in these painfully slow, unscripted moments.
Then the commander said, “I’d like to read my tribute to Columbia.”
Stangley smiled at his own prescience and gave his producer a thumbs-up.
“Go ahead, Columbia, we’re standing by,” the CapCom said, relieved to let someone else speak at this point.
Televisions around the world carried NASA’s audio/video feed of Mission Control on the left of the screen, and on the right the face of Columbia’s commander in a live shot from the flight deck of Columbia.
“Hail Columbia!” The commander read.
“Over the centuries your name has become synonymous with
The adventure of exploration
And the innate wanderlust of the human spirit
You took us on our first voyage around our great planet
Sailing across violent seas
On a voyage fraught with dangers and hardships
But also fantastic discoveries.
“Hundreds of years later
You served us again as our mother ship,
Our remote home in outer space
As Apollo 11 astronauts dared to explore our moon.
“A short twelve years later
We returned in a new spacecraft
Your maiden voyage as STS-1
The first-ever reusable spaceplane
We called Columbia.
“And now for the past thirty days
You’ve kept the crew of STS-107 safe and warm
On your twenty-eighth mission
You have been a good strong ship
But today we must bid you farewell
Your wing is damaged and you can’t fly us home.
“Our journeys together have taught us many things:
As humans, we are but fragile creatures
Tethered to Earth by our weaknesses
We take carefully guarded steps away from home
In search of knowledge and understanding.
“We must never forget
That the curious environment of space, however compelling
Lies ready to exploit any mistakes we make.
Farewell, Columbia, until we meet again!”
The commander looked up with wet eyes from his paper and into the camera. “This is the commander of Columbia, signing off. STS-107 is complete.”
Chapter 68
In Space, Rendezvous Sta
tion
COLUMBIA’S COMMANDER knew he was long overdue in joining his pilot in the airlock. He still needed to finish his pre-breathe before he could transfer to Atlantis. Breathing 100-percent oxygen for 45 minutes would rid his blood of nitrogen.
He knew Garrett and Mullen would be coming for him very soon.
The commander knew all this; he was a shuttle veteran. He also knew that every procedure or maneuver an astronaut performed in space transpired at an agonizingly slow pace. Part of the pace was just the nature of working in microgravity—there was no safe way to speed things up. Science-fiction movies often portrayed human astronaut characters moving as if microgravity had no effect on muscle function or proprioception, or showed space vehicles docking with their mother ships with the same speed people on Earth drive cars into parking spaces. But in space, there is precious little margin for screwups—mistakes could easily result in death.
I’ve got plenty of time—I’ll just be a minute, the commander thought.
He’d entered Columbia’s airlock with his pilot to begin their pre-breathe. The pilot got set up, donned his oxygen mask. The commander looked as if he was going to do the same. Mission Control was watching via Columbia’s onboard cameras. It looked like the nightmare of STS-107 was one step closer to ending.
“I’ll be right back,” the commander said, letting go of his face mask and watching it float away. There was still one thing he needed to do.
“Where is he going now?” asked the CapCom at Mission Control. Everyone looked up to the monitor and saw Columbia’s commander leaving the airlock and heading back out to the middeck.
“Give him a minute,” Allan Warner jumped in, sensing the CapCom was tempted to question the commander. “Just give him a minute.”
“Okay, copy.” The CapCom checked his mike switch, made sure what he was about to say didn’t leave the room, didn’t go out to Columbia.
What’s the rush? the commander asked himself as he passed in front of the mid-deck storage lockers. He realized he would need to return to the airlock soon to prepare for his space walk—in a matter of minutes actually—but for now he simply listened to Columbia’s vital signs: whirring fans cycling against a background of silence.
His ship was going down.
He sorted through memories of his past missions, smiled as he remembered so many incredible days and nights spent in space. Nearly everywhere he looked, there was something that triggered a memory. He found small notes his crew members had written to themselves, important procedural things they did not want to forget during various experiments.
What a magnificent group of individuals trained so long and hard—they wanted to do good work, they had done good work.
He floated slowly through the mid-deck, allowing his fingers to glide along its various surfaces, admiring the fit and finish of his marvelous spacecraft. And then, he felt a chill as he came upon a crew photograph that was taken and printed aboard Columbia back on flight day three. The photograph had been taped to a locker by one of his crew before they headed off to Atlantis. Below the photo someone had written “Hail Columbia!” and they all had signed their names.
Twenty-seven days had passed since the crew photo was taken, certainly not the most days in space endured by an astronaut. Space-station astronauts had stayed aboard as long as six months. But these days aboard Columbia had been arguably the most difficult and harrowing days ever spent by man in space.
Before leaving their ship, the crew had agreed to use this particular photo for their farewell. As he examined the photo, the commander saw a similarity in their smiles and in their eyes: It was the look of unknowing. When the photograph was taken, it captured the faces of those who knew nothing of how their mission was about to change or the kind of physical and psychological challenges that lay ahead. The crew had no inkling of Columbia’s damaged wing.
The commander thought briefly that he might keep the photo as a reminder of how the crew, himself included, looked before their nightmare began. Instead, he took out his pen and added his name to the photo, re-taped it to the locker, and headed back to the airlock.
He finally felt ready to go home.
Chapter 69
In Space, Rendezvous Station
GARRETT FELT what he thought was a “hot spot,” a common hiker’s term to describe the first warning sign of a blister, developing on the inside of his left ankle. So while he waited on Atlantis’s work-stand, he adjusted his foot inside his boot. A simple turn of his ankle easily relieved the pressure and his concern quickly faded. Besides, he knew there were only two more Columbia astronauts to make the transfer to Atlantis. He and Mullen would be back inside Atlantis with the others, “feet up and champagne flowing,” they’d kidded each other, in an hour or so.
He looked up, saw that Mullen was in position with his end of the rope, poised for the transfer. Seconds earlier, Mission Control had announced over the comm loop that Columbia’s commander and pilot were suited, pre-breathe completed, and were waiting for Columbia’s airlock to finish its depress.
“Columbia, Houston, depress complete,” the commander said.
“Roger that, Columbia, open airlock when ready.”
“Copy, open airlock.”
Columbia’s pilot was nearest the airlock’s actuator arm, so he moved the lever to its stop, as far as it would go anyway, and then pulled on the external door to open the airlock to space. Nothing. The pilot grabbed the actuator arm again. Applied more pressure. Attempted to move it farther toward its stop. The arm gave a grinding half-inch. He tried the door again, tried to pull it down into the airlock. Nothing.
The CapCom heard the pilot grunting and struggling with the airlock door. Heard the pilot and commander talking about technique, about trying this versus that; the astronaut’s approach was calm and methodical. But the CapCom understood firsthand how quickly even slight frustrations encountered while in the confines of a space suit and airlock could flash into much bigger problems.
“Mullen, can you get over to the airlock?” the CapCom said.
“Copy, on my way.”
“See if you can’t help them from the outside.”
“Roger Houston, on my way.”
As Mullen maneuvered along the SpaceHab module to Columbia’s airlock, he began to troubleshoot the airlock in his head. Did something get caught in the actuator teeth? Did something from a space suit like a strap or belt, or a pant leg, get caught up in the mechanism? When he arrived, he retethered just outside the airlock.
“Okay Houston, gonna give it a try,” Mullen said.
Mullen tried various angles on the lever, braced his boots into the angle where airlock met the floor of Columbia’s payload bay. Within a few minutes, he could feel himself breaking into a sweat. Initially he was able to move the lever through at least 70 degrees. But with repeated attempts, the mechanism seized. Now he couldn’t move the lever at all. He knew this was a bad sign. The airlock actuator arm was designed to require only eight to ten pounds of pressure to unlock, and a maximum of 30 pounds to fully disengage the latches. Shit Shit Shit, he thought.
At Mission Control, concern was mounting. At the Flight Control console, Allan Warner sprang to his feet and challenged his engineers to explain how an airlock could so suddenly seize. There were no quick answers. “Did something get caught in the mechanism?” one of the engineers asked.
“Hell if I know. Figure it out!” Warner demanded. “Atlantis isn’t leaving without Columbia’s commander and pilot.”
When Julie Pollard overheard Warner’s troubled tone and the words “airlock” and “seize,” she looked away abruptly from a conversation she was only half-listening to anyway. She flitted for a moment like a small bird responding to a threat, then summoned her senses, feeling a superhero’s need to change into the “other” uniform.
“What have we got, Allan?”
“It’s Columbia’s EVA hatch, Julie. Damn thing won’t open.”
“They’ve tried from the outside?”
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“Yes, it’s jammed. I need you to guide a tiger team through this.” Warner looked away, his face full of worry and fatigue. He turned back to Pollard. “Five out of seven isn’t good enough!”
Pollard nodded agreement, and then stepped away, already in motion toward a solution. She scanned the room, found Senca, waved him over.
“I need you to find me the right five to work this airlock problem,” Pollard said to Senca abruptly. “Meet me in the conference room in two minutes.”
“Got it,” Senca said. Then he looked out across the consoles, already knowing who his five were.
Chapter 70
Johnson Space Center, Houston
Conference Room
WHEN SENCA AND HIS TIGER TEAM entered the conference room, they found Pollard standing at a portable white board, feverishly erasing something from a previous conference. Then, with black marker in hand, she quickly wrote “JAMMED EVA HATCH,” across the top of the board.
“Come in guys,” she said, hearing the conference room door opening behind her. As usual, Pollard already had an idea of how to solve the airlock problem. It was something NASA had never tried before—never had a need to before, on any mission. But she wasn’t yet convinced the idea was a good one.
The group moved in, stayed standing, formed a semicircle 8 feet back from the board.
With a red marker Pollard wrote “8:56,” then turned around to the group. She pointed back to the numbers. “Who can tell me what that is?”
The engineers looked puzzled. Pollard didn’t wait. “Eight hours, fifty-six minutes. It’s the record for the longest EVA to date.” She checked her watch and after the briefest of pauses wrote next to the first number, “6:48.”
“Guesses?” Pollard waited only a single beat.
Tim Levy raised a finger to answer, but Pollard didn’t see him in time.
“That’s how long Mullen and Garrett have been out there. The longer we take to figure out what to do, the less time these guys will have to get it done. Remember, the rescue gets finished today, not tomorrow. Right now, four guys in space suits are waiting for us to figure out what to do next.”
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