The Accident

Before the Accident

Thumbnail for STS-113 FRR ET briefing.JPG No accident is unavoidable - if you go back far enough in time. You can always find a 'last chance' where if a decision was made differently the accident could have been avoided. But of course the conditions for that point are only evident with hindsight. For STS-107 the last chance to avoid the accident was three months earlier at the STS-113 Flight Readiness Review on October 31, 2002.

At the STS-113 flight readiness briefing the External Tank team presented its justification for why the lost bipod foam on the previous mission (STS-112 in September) was not a safety concern and flights could continue as-is. Note the final line in bold - "The ET is safe to fly with no new concerns (and no added risk).

After the accident the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) noted that NASA wasn't serious about safety - while they talked about it a lot the Marshall Spaceflight Center engineers and managers just ignored every piece of evidence that foam could damage the shuttle.
Thumbnail for Location of tracking cameras.jpg The tracking cameras which followed Columbia's launch were positioned decades earlier and not optimized for STS-107's northeast flight path. Cameras located on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and in Cocoa Beach Florida noticed a piece of debris come off of the External Tank and hit Columbia's left wing.

Thumbnail for DSC04983 E208.jpg The E208 camera is located in Cocoa Beach next to the Wakulla Motel where many of the STS-107 guests stayed, including many of Dave Brown's family and friends. It was out of focus but wasn't considered essential for launch.

  • Behind the Scenes - how Mission Control reacted to the foam strike during the mission.

    Thumbnail for STS-107 - USA 129 conjunction.jpg

  • There were five opportunities where Columbia passed under the orbit of one of the United States's two operational "Keyhole" spy satellites and hypothetically a Keyhole could have taken an image. Satellite tracking expert Ted Molczan determined the best opportunity was on January 20th as Columbia and USA 129 flew over the region where Kazakhstan, China, and Pakistan meet. The purple line shows Columbia's path and red line shows USA 129's path for that encounter. The maximum resolution on that pass, assuming perfect lighting conditions and a high contrast background, would be 6 cm. (2.5 inches), enough to see a fair amount of detail depending on the extent of the damage.

  • During the mission flight director Steve Stich e-mailed Rick Husband and Willie McCool to inform them about the foam strike on Columbia, just in case some reporter asked them about it during one of their press interviews. There was nothing the crew could do to assist in the analysis but Mission Control didn't want the crew to be caught cold if they were asked about it. The e-mail with Husband's responses was released after the accident.

  • The AMOS telescopes in Hawaii took images of Columbia while it was in orbit.

    After the Accident

  • The NASA contingency plan.
  • The Shuttle contingency plan.

    Thumbnail for 03pd0240 Sean O'Keefe - Bill Readdy.jpg NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and associate administrator for spaceflight Bill Readdy read statements.

    An audio clip of their statements and a transcript.

  • The White House Statement.
  • The Israeli government statement.

  • How the Media covered the STS-107 mission and accident.
  • Two days after the accident NASA manager Bill Readdy wrote a memorandum for the record explaining why he turned down an offer from the military for assistance to take images of Columbia.
  • Scholastic publications sent a letter to teachers about its cover story on Laurel Clark.
  • Challenger commander Dick Scobee's daughter Kathie wrote a letter to the children of the Columbia astronauts to give them solace and explain what she went through seventeen years earlier.

    Thumbnail for Sensors.jpg One of the first clues to the accident was how and when sensors failed during Columbia's reentry in the left wing. It confused the Mission Control team when apparently unrelated sensors started to fail. They didn't share any electronics boxes or circuits so what could cause them all to fail?

    After the accident it was quickly recognized that the sensors did have something in common - their wiring all went past the left wheel well. Engineers created a sequence of charts which showed when each sensor failed in relation to Columbia's flight path and the flashes which were observed by members of the public in the western United States. Here's an animation which shows how the sensors failed over time.

    The bodies of the Columbia astronauts arrive at Dover AFB.
    Thumbnail for 20030205_sts107dover_06.jpg    		 NASA deputy administrator Fred Gregory receives the bodies of the Columbia astronauts.
    Thumbnail for 20030205_sts107dover_05.jpg    		 Many rolls of film were recovered. 92 frames were eventually released by NASA, some heavily damaged by the heat and exposure to the environment.
    Thumbnail for sts107-402-015 Laurel glovebox damaged negative.jpg
    E208 photo and tracking map by author Philip Chien.
    Challenger letter courtesy of Kathie Scobee Fulgham.
    Other photos from the author's collection, CAIB, and NASA.

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    copyright 2005 Philip Chien All Rights Reserved