Category Archives: space

Reflections on the Loss of STS-107, the Space Shuttle Columbia: Ten Years Ago

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STS-107

STS-107 crew members lost when space shuttle “Columbia” broke up during reentry on February 1, 2003. STS-107 crew members included astronauts Rick D. Husband (left), mission commander; Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist; and William C. McCool, pilot. Standing are (from the left) astronauts David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark, and Michael P. Anderson, all mission specialists; and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist representing the Israeli Space Agency.

NASA staffers and leaders had a celebration planned on February 1, 2003 for the return of Columbia and its crew after the successful completion of STS-107. STS-107 had been launched from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on January 16 on a science mission that was dedicated to research in physical, life, and space sciences. It held the SPACEHAB Research Double Module and involved the execution of approximately 80 separate experiments, comprised of hundreds of samples and test points. The seven astronauts aboard had worked 24 hours a day, in two alternating shifts, to complete these experiments.

Unfortunately, STS-107 never made it home; both the vehicle and crew were lost during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. NASA lost communication with Columbia a little before 9:00 a.m. EST on February 1, and when the shuttle failed to land at its appointed time of 9:16 a.m. at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe knew something was wrong. He said:

I immediately advised the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, at the point after landing was due to have occurred at 9:16 a.m., and spoke to them very briefly to advise them that we had lost contact with the Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, and STS-107 crew. They offered, the President specifically offered, full and immediate support to determine the appropriate steps to be taken. We then spent the next hour and a half working through the details and information of what we have received [concerning]…operational and technical issues.

Lost in the accident was the STS-107 crew of seven astronauts. These included Mission Commander Rick Husband; Pilot William “Willie” McCool; Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, and Laurel Clark; Payload Commander Michael Anderson; and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. Sad as this loss was, NASA personnel vowed that the astronauts had not died in vain and that space exploration would continue. Moreover, this accident taught harsh lessons of the risk of exploring a new frontier and allowed humanity to learn lessons that would make space travel safer into the future.

President G.W. Bush offered these comments at the memorial service for the crew:

The loss was sudden and terrible, and for their families, the grief is heavy. Our nation shares in your sorrow and in your pride. And today we remember not only one moment of tragedy, but seven lives of great purpose and achievement. To leave behind Earth and air and gravity is an ancient dream of humanity. For these seven, it was a dream fulfilled. Each of these astronauts had the daring and discipline required of their calling. Each of them knew that great endeavors are inseparable from great risks. And each of them accepted those risks willingly, even joyfully, in the cause of discovery.

Columbia was the first orbiter built and flown in space, having undertaken 28 successful missions. In February 2001, Columbia had received a major overhaul and update of its systems but it was still an aging vehicle. The STS-107 mission where it was lost was Columbia’s second flight following its overhaul, with the first one a successful servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in March 2002.

The process of initiating a Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) began almost immediately. Its first meeting, under the direction of retired U.S. Navy Admiral Harold W. Gehman Jr.—who co-chaired the commission that investigated the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Aden, Yemen, on October 12, 2000—was scheduled for February 3. “While the NASA family and the entire world mourn the loss of our colleagues, we have a responsibility to quickly move forward with an external assessment to determine exactly what happened and why,” said Administrator O’Keefe. “We’re honored to have such a distinguished panel of experts, led by Admiral Gehman.”

At the same time, with debris scattered over Texas, Louisiana, and other parts of the south-central United States, teams of investigators scoured the countryside for as much of Columbia as they could find. Within 24 hours of the accident, a large group was on the ground and working with local officials in Texas and Louisiana. The State of Texas activated 800 members of the Texas National Guard to assist with the retrieval of debris. By  February 4, more than 2,000 people from Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, U.S. Forest Service, Texas National Guard, and state and local authorities were working to locate, document, and collect debris.

By May 2003 the CAIB released their working scenario for the accident. The Board commented that at approximately 81 seconds after a 10:39 a.m. EST launch on January 16, 2003, post-launch photographic analysis determined that foam from the External Tank (ET) left bipod ramp area impacted Columbia in the vicinity of the lower left wing reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panels 5-9. While on orbit for 16 days, neither the Columbia crew nor controllers on the ground had any indication of damage based on orbiter telemetry, crew downlinked video, still photography, or crew reports. When the vehicle began reentry this damaged section of the wing according to the CAIB, “was subjected to extreme entry heating over a long period of time, leading to RCC rib erosion, severely slumped carrier panel tiles, and substantial metallic slag deposition on the RCC panels nearest the damaged area.” The destruction of the wing from overheating caused the breakup and crash of Columbia. It was a tragedy that cost the lives of seven astronauts and the spacecraft.

The loss of both Columbia and its crew signaled the beginning of an important policy debate about the future of human spaceflight. NASA grounded the shuttle fleet, appropriately so, at the time of the accident, but wanted to return to flight by the fall of 2003. Others, some of them members of Congress, thought that the shuttle fleet should not only be grounded but immediately retired. Still others announced that America must find the technical problem that caused the loss of Columbia, fix that problem on all of the remaining orbiters, determine the appropriate organizational and management issues that allowed the technical problem to go unresolved, and only then return to flight.

A decade has passed since this accident. The crew deserves honor and respect for their sacrifice, to be sure, but also for their commitment and dedication to the cause of pushing back the frontiers of knowledge about space. The space shuttle has been retired. The policy debate about how best to continue human spaceflight still rages. NASA is presently pursuing a program designed to foster private sector solutions to support International Space Station operations in low-Earth orbit. The intention is that the space agency will be able to contract with outside providers of launch services to orbit rather than build its own vehicle for that purpose.

That strategy may free NASA up to pursue technologies opening up cis-lunar and perhaps trans-lunar space activities. Turning low-Earth orbit over to commercial entities—as in the classic 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey—could empower NASA to focus its attention on deep space exploration, making possible a return to the Moon and perhaps explorations beyond sooner rather than later. That would be an exceedingly appropriate remembrance for the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia.

Roger Launius is a curator in the Space History Department of the National Air and Space Museum.

Neil, Flat Stanley, and Me

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I knew Neil Armstrong, not all that well, but for a very long time. I first met him in July 1972, when the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) opened the Neil Armstrong Museum in the astronaut’s hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio. A 20-something director of education for the OHS, I had planned all of the exhibitions for that museum. I wrote my first short book, or long pamphlet, depending on your point of view, as part of the project: The Giant Leap: A Chronology of Ohio Aerospace events and Personalities (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1971). Neil agreed to write the foreword for the book, an extraordinary honor for a budding historian. When my little book was published, the designer printed Neil’s signature at the end of the forward. Twenty years later, in 1991, Neil spent some time at the National Air and Space Museum working on his short-lived television series, First Flights. He was sitting in my office one day when I showed him a copy of the book, and asked him if he remembered writing the foreword. He said of course he did, picked it up and signed it beneath his printed signature, this at a time when he was no longer giving autographs. That is a souvenir I treasure.

I met Neil quite a few times over the years. In 2000 I even recruited him to membership on the First Flight Centennial Federal Advisory Board, an organization which I chaired that was involved in helping to plan the commemoration of the first flights of the Wright brothers a century before. It was one of my most important contributions to the success of the centennial effort. Neil was one of the most active members of the Board. The most private of men, he nevertheless made a great many media appearances in 2003, insuring that the public understood and appreciated the genius of the Wright brothers and the extent to which their invention had shaped the modern world.

Only once during the forty years that I knew him, did I presume to ask Neil for a personal favor. In the fall of 2010 the National Museum of Naval Aviation invited me to present a talk on the Wright brothers at its annual history symposium. Our grandson, a proud first grader, was involved in a “Flat Stanley” project. Each of the kids in his class colored a pasteboard cut-out of a character named “Flat Stanley,” who was then mailed to friends or relatives in another part of the country. Those kind folks were asked to take photos of Stanley at local scenic spots and send the cut-out character and the photos back to the student, along with a letter talking about the places he had visited. The kids used that information to create a poster and tell the class about Stanley’s travels.

Our grandson had sent his Flat Stanley to his uncle in Georgia, but as my wife and I were about to leave on a long driving trip through the South, Alex’s teacher asked us if we would take one of his classmate’s cut-out Stanley with us on our trip. The child responsible for this Stanley was the daughter of new South Asian immigrants and wanted to participate, but did not know whom to send her character to. So, off we went on a trip that would take Flat Stanley on a visit with family in Georgia, attendance at the Pensacola conference, and on to a wedding in south Florida.

Flat Stanley

Neil Armstrong, Tom Crouch, and Flat Stanley

When we arrived at Pensacola, I discovered that Neil was there, as well. We chatted at some length, and I thought about asking him to have his picture taken with Flat Stanley, but decided that I did not want to impose. At the end of the conference, as my wife and I were loading our luggage into the car parked outside the Visiting Officers Quarters, a familiar voice behind me said, “Tom, say hello to Wilbur and Orville for me!” On the spur of the moment I stuck my head in the car and asked Nancy to give me Flat Stanley and a camera. I tried my best to explain this fairly complex notion for a first grade project to Neil, and asked him if he would have his picture taken with Stanley and me. He did so, with grace and a huge smile. I just hope he remembers to say hello to Wilbur and Orville for me.

Tom D. Crouch is a senior curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Alan G. Poindexter (1961–2012)

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Poindexter

Alan G. Poindexter

Astronaut Alan “Dex” Poindexter joined fellow Space Shuttle commanders and crewmembers at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center recently to welcome Discovery to its new home in the Smithsonian. Poindexter commanded the next-to-last Discovery mission, STS-131, in 2010. He also served as pilot on Atlantis for the STS-122 mission in 2008. Both shuttle crews delivered equipment for construction of the International Space Station.

Poindexter joined the astronaut corps in 1998 in the midst of a distinguished career as a naval aviator, first as a fighter pilot, then as a test pilot. He served two deployments in the Arabian Gulf during operations Desert Storm and Southern Watch in the early 1990s. Afterward he attended the Naval Postgraduate School and U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, graduating and serving first as a test pilot at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, and then at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia.

Poindexter accumulated more than 4,000 hours in more than 30 types of aircraft and logged more than 450 carrier landings. He also tallied almost 28 days and more than 11 million miles in space, orbiting the Earth 443 times.

Although born in California and a graduate of Georgia Tech, Poindexter considered Rockville, Maryland, his hometown. At the time of his death, Captain Poindexter had retired from NASA and returned to active duty in the Navy to serve as dean of students at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California.

Valerie Neal is a curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Drive on Curiosity, Drive On!

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“You put an X anyplace in the solar system, and the engineers at NASA can land a spacecraft on it,” so said actor Robert Guillaume in an episode of “Sports Night,” a situation comedy about a team that produced a nightly cable sports broadcast in 2001. Amen brother, the team that landed Curiosity proved the truth of that statement one more time with the successful landing of a big rover on Mars in the wee morning hours of August 6, 2012! It was a stunning success.

Curiosity

This is the first image taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT). The rover’s shadow is visible in the foreground. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL. Photo Number: PIA15969-428

There was nothing magic about it, but the event itself transcended the hard-edged scientific and technological knowledge that made the latest Mars landing successful. After years of hard work and dedication, the team working on Mars Curiosity had their moment of truth about 1:30 a.m. EDT this morning. The first data back demonstrated that the rover has reached the surface of the red planet safely, and the first images to reach Earth showed where Curiosity was sitting on the Gale Crater floor. It was euphoric,…at mission control, around NASA, in numerous science centers, and in Times Square where thousands gathered to watch the proceedings. It was a geek’s dream come true as the folks in Times Square watching on the big screen began chanting “sci-ence, sci-ence, sci-ence.”

Of course there is more to do—a lot more—as Mars Curiosity begins its multi-year mission to explore the Gale Crater and to climb Mt. Sharp in its center. Curiosity brings to the red planet’s surface a formidable life sciences laboratory that may well help us resolve beyond serious question whether or not life ever existed on Mars. This rover is the first full-scale astrobiology mission to Mars since the Viking landers of 1976. Having followed the water, and found evidence of it, it is now time for NASA to answer this massively large question: Are there locations on or under the surface that could have supported—or might still support—life on Mars? This is a bold question requiring the boldest type of mission to answer it. Mars Curiosity has 10 different instruments designed to help find the answer to this question. It will look for processes that might have preserved clues about life, either now or in the past, on the Red Planet.

Times Square

Reaction in Times Square as Mars Curiosity landed in the early morning of August 6, EDT. Photo Credit: CS Muncy.

So here’s to the team that landed Curiosity on the surface of Mars in a very small target inside Gale Crater! All I can say at present after the superb Martian landing is drive on Curiosity, drive on!

Roger D. Launius is a senior curator in the National Air and Space Museum’s Division of Space History.

Satisfying Our Curiosity: Mars Science Laboratory and the Quest for the Red Planet

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Mars has long held a special fascination for humans—in no small measure because of the possibility that life either presently exists or at some time in the past has existed there. In his classic work Cosmos, Carl Sagan asks an important question: “Why Martians?” Why do Earthlings not similarly obsess over “Saturnarians” or “Plutonians?” As a planet resembling our own, Sagan concludes, Mars “has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our earthly hopes and fears.”

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover is scheduled to land on the Red Planet in the early morning hours of August 6, 2012 EDT. Thus, “Why Mars?” is a question that we will seek to answer for visitors to the National Air and Space Museum.

Curiosity

Curiosity on Mars (artist’s conception). Credit: NASA/JPL. Image number: PIA14156.

The size of a small car, the nuclear-powered Curiosity is dedicated — using its cameras, spectrometers, radiation detectors, and other instruments — to revealing the mysteries of Mars’ Gale Crater and environs. The first task and perhaps the greatest challenge facing Curiosity will be reaching the Martian surface safely. Much of the focus for NASA’s pre-landing publicity has been Curiosity’s complicated landing procedure, which evokes a science fiction-like “Seven Minutes of Terror,”  a video that has all the makings of a trailer for a Hollywood blockbuster. The audacious landing, run entirely by computer, will bring Curiosity from a speed of 20,921 kilometers per hour (13,000 miles per hour) to stationary-touchdown using, in successive stages, a massive supersonic parachute, radar-imaging, rocket boosters, and a sky crane.

Curiosity

Curiosity during a mobility test. Credit: NASA/JPL. Image Number: PIA14256.

Further complicating Curiosity’s already daring arrival technique is the specificity of its landing target. The elliptical-shaped target landing area for the 1976 Viking Mars lander was gigantic by comparison: 300 kilometers (186 miles) across. Curiosity’s landing ellipse, only six kilometers (four miles) wide and 19 kilometers (12 miles) long, is so minute (relatively speaking) because its target is a specific area inside Gale Crater, an exciting location for scientists to explore on Mars. Gale is a low point located close to Aeolis Mons (also called “Mount Sharp”) which is six kilometers (3.7 miles) high (by comparison, Mount Everest is 8.8 kilometers or 5.4 miles high). This mountain, which sits in the center of the crater, is made up of layers of rock that enable geologists to trace the history of the planet’s evolution. Through investigation of Martian geology, scientists may well discover the secret of whether or not Mars ever held life. By employing a “follow the water” strategy—since H2O is the fundamental building block of life as we understand it—NASA is attempting on this mission not to actually find life but to locate environments where life may once have existed or perhaps could exist in the future.

Martian Landing Sites

Landing ellipses for Mars exploration missions: Viking (1970’s), Pathfinder (1997), Mars Exploration Rover (MER) (2003), Phoenix (2008), and Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (2012). Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).

Yet, hasn’t NASA sent robotic explorers to Mars in search of life already? The Viking missions of the 1970s were charged in part with searching for evidence of life on Mars and 2003’s twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity, conducted geological experiments  seeking evidence of water/ice on Mars. Curiosity, then, indicates that NASA, despite previous failures, is seemingly unable to shake the possibility that there is, was, or could be in the future life not only elsewhere in the solar system, but specifically on Mars.

The lure of Mars has also helped determine another goal of MSL: to “prepare for human exploration.” No rovers are set to explore Venus, the Moon, or any of the planets beyond the asteroid belt, which have been definitively deemed uninhabitable, though both Venus and the Moon have shown some traces of water molecules. NASA’s quest to find life on Mars and investigate the potential of human colonies there indicates humanity’s seemingly inexorable quest to unmask the mysteries of universe, and in the process learn more about our own planet Earth and those who inhabit it.

As an institution devoted not just to the history and technology of aeronautics and spaceflight but also the scientific discoveries made about our universe, the National Air and Space Museum has long related the story of Mars exploration. The Museum features an entire exhibit on Exploring the Planets with a recently updated section on Mars exploration that probes how we understand our not-so-distant planetary neighbor and displays mock-ups of the MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Furthermore, as discussed in our recent “Mars Day!” event, John Grant of the Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) is heavily involved in Curiosity’s success and he helped choose Gale Crater as the rover’s landing site and Mount Sharp as its destination point.

Those staying up to view Curiosity‘s landing live on TV will have a suspenseful watching experience: will news from the rover come back right away or take minutes, or even hours? Because of Mars’ distance from the Earth, signals from Curiosity take 14 minutes to reach Earth. The landing process, however, takes only seven minutes, hence the “seven minutes of terror.”  When NASA receives its first signals from Curiosity, the rover will already have been sitting on the Martian surface, in one piece or otherwise, for seven minutes. Yet, as is the case with most space-based communication, “seven minutes” may turn into a number of hours, and the success of Curiosity’s complicated landing may not be known until a day or so later. The rover itself will not begin exploring Mars right away as NASA will spend some time assessing the condition of the rover, which will take and transmit its first photographs before beginning its journey up Aeolis Mons.

Even if Curiosity does not find evidence for the possible presence of life on Mars, NASA would like to continue efforts to learn more about the red planet. While Curiosity is slated to function for 687 Earth-days (one Martian year), humanity’s curiosity about Mars and its potential for life is seemingly never-ending.

Jonathan Cohen of McGill University is an intern in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Get the latest information on the mission at http://www.nasa.gov/mars and follow the Mars Curiosity rover’s progress on twitter https://twitter.com/marscuriosity