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In central Texas, thousands of people at that moment were observing the orbiter break up at Mach 18.3 and 207,000 feet.Ī few minutes later is when Cain ordered the doors locked and the computer data saved. check," he repeated every 15 to 30 seconds, but with no response.
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Shuttle Columbia Crew Not Told of Their DoomĪbout three minutes after all data stopped, astronaut Charlie Hobaugh, who was the capcom in Mission Control, began transmitting in the blind to Columbia on the UHF backup radio system. They had also noticed highly unusual buildup of sensor telemetry in the preceding few minutes. I was thunderstruck and astonished again."Įngineers at Mission Control thought they were seeing an unusual but non-critical data drop-out. Had he spoken to our engineering director about this? I wanted the director of JSC engineering to be informed. "I made a phone call to the manager of the shuttle engineering office, the same person that had relayed the 'No" message to me from orbiter management. In an exclusive interview with ABC News in 2003 he detailed how his requests were repeatedly denied. It was agonizing for Rocha, who had begged the Mission Management Team to ask the Department of Defense to use whatever it had to take high resolution photos. They had no robotic arm to look at the wing, no way to repair the wing if they had damage, and it would take much too long to send up another space shuttle to rescue the crew. The crew was on a science mission, nowhere near the International Space Station. At that time NASA had no options for repair. Fuzzy video showed foam breaking off the orbiter's external fuel tank and hitting its left wing during blast off. Several engineers at the space agency suspected something was wrong. Rodney Rocha was one of them, and on that sunny Saturday morning in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, when data from the orbiter stopped coming in, and the position display froze over Texas, he was concentrating on the unusual buildup of sensor telemetry on the crippled orbiter. While no one knew for sure what caused Columbia's accident, there were engineers at the Johnson Space Center who were pretty sure they knew what happened, who had tried to alert senior management, and who were ignored. The space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated over Texas, killing the seven astronauts on board and scattering debris across hundreds of miles. There were tears in his eyes and stunned silence in Mission Control. One of the most dramatic moments after the space shuttle Columbia crashed came when entry Flight Director Leroy Cain ordered the doors locked and computer data saved.
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The doomed astronauts were not told of the risk. The dilemma for mission managers is that they simply didn't know if the space shuttle was damaged. Orbiting in space until your oxygen ran out. Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?"Ī bleak assessment. If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. "After one of the MMTs (Mission Management Team) when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed, he (Flight Director Jon Harpold) gave me his opinion: 'You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS (Thermal Protection System). Recently he wrote about the debate in his blog, recalling a meeting to discuss the dilemma: Wayne Hale, who later became space shuttle program manager, struggled with this question after the deaths of the Columbia crew 10 years ago.