Probably Waylon J ennings: TheFinal Minutes of Columbia(Part 1) AmericaSpace

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'Probably Waylon Jennings': The Final
Minutes of Columbia (Part 1)
By Ben Evans
Pictured fromColumbias aft flight deck, this view shows the payload bay and Spacehab research double
module. The grey-colored RCC panels lining the leading edges of the wings can clearly be seen, but the Panel
8/9 junction on the left wing (to the right of this image) is out of sight. Investigators would later conclude that a
hole, some 6-10 inches across, had been punched through the RCC during ascent. Photo Credit: NASA
Andy Cline woke up on the morning of Saturday, 1 February 2003, with an inexplicable sense
of dread. Alone in his cabin in Wyoming, he was aware that his seven friendsRick
Husband, Willie McCool, Dave Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Mike Anderson, Laurel Clark, and
Ilan Ramon, the crew of STS-107were due to return to Earth, and he was keen to check
that they had executed their de-orbit burn and begun their hour-long glide home. More than
a year earlier, Cline had served as one of two guides on the National Outdoor Leadership
School (NOLS) and had helped lead the STS-107 crew in a team-building exercise in the
mountains. Sixteen days ago, he had watched proudly as Space Shuttle Columbia roared into
orbit but today, he instinctively knew that something was amiss.
My wife had gotten up early to go into the mountains for some work, Cline told BBC
journalist Leo Enright, a few months later. The emotion of that terrible day was still evident in
his voice: I was lying in bed, thinking that the Columbia crew was about to land. It was one
of those uncanny moments when I realized that something was desperately wrong. I put
on my clothes and started running down the path to the road.Cline met his wife at the
halfway point. She told him about Columbia. Cline broke down and wept.
Evelyn Husband and her two children were filled with great joy that morning as they awaited
the return of their husband and father from his mission. Like the STS-107 families, they were
at the Kennedy Space Centers viewing site, close to the Shuttle Landing Facility, eager to be
reunited with their loved ones. At 9:05 a.m. EST, with 11 minutes to go before Columbias
scheduled touchdown, a poignant photograph was taken of Evelyn and her children, standing
in front of the famous countdown clock. Little did they realize that as it ticked away the final
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Probably Waylon J ennings: TheFinal Minutes of Columbia(Part 1) AmericaSpace
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=30487[2/26/2013 3:08:57 AM]
This image of an Orbiter Experiments (OEX) recorder
illustrates the approximate size and dimensions of
the black box which helped to unravel Columbias
final minutes. Photo Credit: NASA
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minutes, the shuttle had already broken apart.
For Laurel Clarks eight-year-old son, Iain, the sense of wrongness had preceded even the
launch itself. He had repeatedly begged his mother not to fly; he cried on the morning of 16
J anuary, when Columbia rose perfectly into a cloudless Florida sky, and complained to her
about leaving at every family video conference. His father, Dr. J on Clark, a NASA flight
surgeon, regarded it as something more than typical separation anxiety. Years later, Dr.
Clark would ponder how his son could possibly have known that something was not right.
What do kids know that we dont know? he asked. What do they see that we dont see?
Six weeks after the loss of Columbia, on the morning of 19 March 2003, Florida firefighter Art
Baker prayed for success. He was one of thousands of volunteers searching a vast area of
Texas for Columbias debris and intuitively knew that any single fragment could shed
important light upon what caused the disaster. Suspicion that the foam did it had been at the
forefront of many minds from the outset, although even Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron
Dittemore doubted that such an inconsequential strike of insulating foam on Columbias left
wing could possibly have brought down a $2 billion national asset. It was a view shared by
NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe, who feared that the root cause may never be found.
The definitive answer might come from the
Orbiter Experiments (OEX) recorder, which
formed part of the shuttles Modular Auxiliary
Data System (MADS) and served effectively as a
black box,storing data from over 570 sensors
scattered throughout the airframe. As NASAs
oldest orbiter, Columbia was the only one to
have such a device. It had been installed for her
initial four test flights in 198182, and although a
handful of sensors were removed in the
intervening years, most were still operational for
STS-107. It is thus one of the cruellest ironies of
this mission that, had any of the other vehicles
Discovery, Atlantis, or Endeavourbeen lost, the
cause may never have been identified. So it was
that when Art Baker found the OEX recorder as
he trudged through hilly terrain close to
Hemphill, Texas, on 19 March, the process of
reconstructing Columbias final moments could
begin in earnest. The recorders location was
pinpointed by painstakingly plotting the discovery
of other debrisincluding boxes originally mounted on either side of the OEXwhich had
either been mangled or torn apart. Miraculously, the OEX was in near-pristine condition. Two
days later, the recorder was sent to data-storage specialist Imation Corporation in Minnesota,
which began cleaning and stabilizing it. Shortly thereafter, it returned to the Kennedy Space
Center for copying, and from thence to the J ohnson Space Center for engineering analysis.
Its tape had been broken between the supply and take-up reels, and a portion had been
stretched. However, Imation specialists confirmed that it was in remarkable condition for
something which had survived a hypersonic, high-G fall from the edge of space. It was hand-
cleaned by being repeatedly immersed in filtered, de-ionized water, then dried with lint-free
cloth and nitrogen and re-wound back onto its original hub with new flanges. On 25 March, it
was back at KSC and the early analysis was promising. It indicated a strong signal and
valid data lasting until 9:00:18 a.m. EST, almost a full minute after Commander Rick
Husband made his final radio transmission from Columbia and 14 seconds after Texas
skywatchers videotaped the first debris contrails.
Nor was the OEX the only miraculous find from the STS-107 debris. A week after the
accident, in early February, United Launch Alliance engineer Carl Vita and NASA engineer
Marty Pontecorvo found a video cassette lying on a roadside near Palestine, Texas. They
dumped it into a greasy Wal-Mart fried chicken bag and sent it to J SC for analysis. Itll
probably turn out to be a Waylon J ennings or a Merle Haggard tape, they joked. At least
the lab guys will get a kick out of it.
Not until the end of February was the cassettes true significance discovered.
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Probably Waylon J ennings: TheFinal Minutes of Columbia(Part 1) AmericaSpace
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=30487[2/26/2013 3:08:57 AM]
As STS-107 Payload Commander, Mike Anderson
was responsible for orchestrating the operation of
more than 80 experiments. His efforts ensured that
the mission turned into a scientific bonanza. Photo
Credit: NASA/Ben Evans personal collection
Not until the hot plasma breached the wheel wells,
and severe controllability issues arose, would it
appear that Rick Husband (background) and Willie
McCool became aware of the catastrophe that was
about to consume them. Photo Credit: NASA
1 month 1 month 1 month
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Video courtesy of NASA
It was, in fact, the videotape shot by Laurel Clark during the early stages of Columbias
descent and contained 13 minutes of footage of herself, Chawla, Husband, and McCool in
jubilant spirits, donning gloves, telling jokes and admiring the spectacular light show outside
the windows. They clearly had no idea that even as they chatted and looked forward to their
Florida homecoming, ionized atoms from the gradually thickening air were entering a hole in
their ships left wing and soon would begin destroying it from the inside out. Some might
view it as a miracle, said Charles Figley of Florida State Universitys Traumatology Institute.
Suddenly, here is a postcard of these men and women. He felt that it may have offered the
families some peace.
The videotape ended at 8:47:30 a.m. EST. Clark continued filming after that time, but
whatever happened next was stored on the outermost edges of the cassette and burned
away during its fall to Earth. Certainly, she intended to film throughout the entire re-entry, so
it is perhaps fortunate that the horrifying minutes after 8:47:30 a.m. did not survive.
Combined with data from the debris, and from
the OEX recorder, investigators of the hurriedly-
convened Columbia Accident Investigation Board
(CAIB)headed by retired Navy Admiral Harold
Gehmanset to work exploring what happened
to the shuttle as it neared the end of its life.
About a minute after the end of Clarks surviving
tape, a strain gauge attached to an aluminum
spar, just behind one of the Reinforced Carbon
Carbon (RCC) panels on the left wings leading
edge, recorded an unusual increase of structural
stress. It seemed that the aluminum was
expanding and beginning to soften.
Each wing consisted of upper and lower
surfaces, connected by an aluminum framework,
with 22 individually-shaped RCC panels attached
to the leading edge. The panels were numbered,
with 1 being closest to the fuselage and 22
being furthest away. Detailed image analysis of
the STS-107 ascent suggested that a chunk of
foam from the External Tank probably hit Panel
8, which was not visible to the astronauts whilst
in space; their view of it was blocked by the
open payload bay doors. Even if they had known
about it, there was little that they could have
done.
The strain gauge, which first measured unusual stress levels, was located immediately aft of
Panel 9, ironically in the region of the wing which was subjected to the most fierce re-entry
temperatures. Its data was among that retrieved from the OEX recorder and pointed to
trouble brewing a few minutes after the onset of entry interface, the point at which the
shuttle began to encounter the first tenuous traces of the sensible atmosphere. When the
CAIB published its report into the disaster on 26 August 2003, they were convinced by the
strain gauge data alone that Columbia began her re-entry with a fatally breached RCC panel.
The strength of the gauges readings led investigators to zero in on the specific panel; it must
have been within 15 inches of the point at which hot gas played on the aluminum spar
and this pointed the finger directly at Panel 8.
Twenty seconds after the first strain gauge data, a MADS sensor in the hollow cavity behind
Panels 9 and 10 and just in front of the aluminum spars began measuring odd temperature
increases. Since the sensor itself was heavily insulated and some distance away, this data
offered investigators a chilling insight into the size and severity of the breach: they estimated
a hole between six and ten inches wide! Anything smaller probably would not produce such
large observed readings from a heavily-insulated sensor so many inches away from the
breach site.
It was around five minutes after entry interface,
at 8:50 a.m. EST, when Columbias computers
commenced the intricate process of actively
guiding the spacecraft towards KSCs Shuttle
Landing Facility by smoothly swinging the nose
80 degrees to the right. A handful of seconds
later, sensors attached to the left-hand Orbital
Maneuvering System (OMS) pod at the rear of
the orbiter registered an unusual temperature
change. Instead of gradually climbing, the
temperatures rose peculiarly slowly. Wind-tunnel
tests would later confirm that some of the hot air
entering Panel 8 was blowing metallic vapor
from melted insulation through air vents in the
top side of the left wing. This interfered with
normal airflow around the vehicle and slowed
anticipated temperature increases on the left
side. As re-entry heating worsened, melted
Inconela heat-resistant alloy used to seal the RCC panelsstarted spraying Columbias
metallic skin.
NASA's Amazing Daily Image
Saturn's North Polar Hexagon

Saturn's north polar hexagon basks in the Sun's light
now that spring has come to the northern hemisphere.
Many smaller storms dot the north polar region and
Saturn's signature rings, which appear to disappear
on account of Saturn's shadow, put in an appearance
in the background. The image was taken with the
Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera on Nov. 27,
2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of
near-infrared light centered at 750 nanometers. The
view was acquired at a distance of approximately
403,000 miles (649,000 kilometers) from Saturn and
at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 21
degrees. Image scale is 22 miles (35 kilometers) per
pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space
Science Institute
Read More
Probably Waylon J ennings: TheFinal Minutes of Columbia(Part 1) AmericaSpace
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=30487[2/26/2013 3:08:57 AM]
Then, a few seconds after 8:52 a.m., the aluminum spar behind Panel 8 finally burned
through. Columbia was doomed and, unbeknownst to the crew, was entering her final minutes
of existence. In the weeks and months that followed, some would argue that those final
minutes of Columbias life were her finest.

The second part of this article will appear tomorrow.
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February 1st, 2013 | Tags: Admiral Harold Gehman, AmericaSpace, Astronaut, CAIB, Cape
Canaveral, Columbia, Columbia Accident Investigation Board, Dave Brown, Exploration,
Explore, Human Space Flight, Ilan Ramon, J ohnson Space Center, J SC, Kalpana Chawla,
Kennedy Space Center, KSC, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, NASA, Rick Husband, rocket,
Rockets, Shuttle, Space, space exploration, space shuttle, STS-107, Willie McCool |
Category: Ben Evans, Columbia, NASA, Shuttle, Space, space shuttle
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