All language subtitles for The Space Shuttle That Fell to Earth [MVGroup]

It's almost over Sacramento now.

Don't see anything yet.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.

See. Oh, is that it? There it is.
Right there. There it is.

Yeah, I see it. I saw it.
There it is.

Oh, it's cool.

That is cool!

Oh, check that out, man!

It's going really fast.

What the heck is that?!
I don't know.

Wow!

Look at the chunks coming off of it!
Yeah. I saw it. Yeah.

I see what you're saying.

That thing looks like it's flipping
all over the place. Oh, yeah!

I can still see it,
but I'm losing it.

I can't. I've got it...
Still got it in the camera.

Where's it over right now, Dad?
6.50...

They're in Texas right now.

It was a Saturday morning.

I was preparing to come to work.

It was a beautiful day,
beautiful drive.

And as I turned onto Park Street...

..I heard a loud boom.

All of a sudden,
our house just shook.

We, you know, looked at each other
and we said, "What is that?"

When I looked up,
I saw a bright white ball.

SIREN WAILS

Phones were ringing off the hook,

much more than our dispatch staff
could handle.

I didn't know
if we were being attacked.

REPORTER: Search and rescue teams
are warning people

not to touch any debris
should they come across it.

REPORTER: There are
some disturbing pictures

that are coming up
from the broadcasters.

NEWSREADER: We're waiting for more
details as to how this happened,

maybe the beginnings
of why it happened.

Nasa has declared a state
of emergency over Texas.

REPORTER: There is something amiss.
We are watching Mission Control.

Nasa has gone through this before,
17 years ago,

with the space shuttle Challenger.

You can see in their eyes
that it is hectic and it is tense.

If you work in human space flight,

this is the worst possible thing
that can ever happen.

The shuttle is the most complicated
space machine ever built.

The world's greatest
electric flying machine.

It has been a bad day for Nasa.

A sense of tragedy
in the space programme,

and as word spreads
across the nation...

There are no simple
and easy answers.

We are doing everything
we possibly can to find out

what caused this accident.

All the warning signs were there.

This didn't have to happen.
We let it happen.

Lean in. Bunch up. Arms.

Hug up. Bunch up. Bunch up.

Lean in there, everyone.
LAUGHTER, CHATTER

All right!

Here we go!
CAMERA FLICKERS

All right, very good.

OK, don't move too far.

Who's first? OK, here we go.

Grins again. Ready, one, two...
CAMERA FLICKERS

OK, thank you...

I was an astronaut crew secretary.

All right... Cheese!
LAUGHTER

I would see the crew daily.

Hold on, let me
take the glasses off.

That would be easier.

I'm not a starstruck kind of
person, right?

But you fly 12,500 miles an hour?

I was like, "Yeah! I like you."

SHE LAUGHS

Woohoo, baby!
LAUGHTER

When they got selected as a crew,
I went and got their astronaut bio

and I read what they did
with their lives.

I went over, and I'm like,
"Oh, doctor!"

Dr Dave Brown, surgeon.

Dr Kalpana Chawla, PhD.

Laurel... Laurel
was a submarine doctor.

I thought that was so cool.

Mike, he was an Air Force pilot.

And then Willie,
he was like a test pilot.

Rick, he'd already been up to space.

And then there was Ilan -

you know, he was already a hero
in his country.

So, I was like, "Wow, we have
the juice here! This will work."

They came together
to start training.

Welcome aboard.

Good morning. You ready for us
to pull down these window shades

and get going here?

This is your sleeping liner.
And this is the sleeping pad.

Post-flight, if you can provide us
some comments,

we'd really appreciate
if this worked for you.

Laurel, do you want camera?

Four of us are flying
for the first time,

and that could be seen
as a disadvantage.

In some ways,
it's an incredible advantage

because we have a wealth
of enthusiasm and excitement

that other, more seasoned crews
may not have.

When you put the helmet on the EMU,
it interferes...

I was married to Laurel Clark,
who was on the Columbia mission.

We met in Navy dive school.

She beat us in the swimming,
the guys.

And that was kind of irritating.

She was just tenacious.

She always had a smile on her face
no matter what happened.

It was really beautiful.

THEY LAUGH

I feel very fortunate to be assigned
to this mission.

I'm expecting it to be
an experience of my lifetime so far.

If you're a rookie astronaut
and you've never flown before,

the first mission
is the best mission.

It could have been hauling garbage
to some planet

and she would have loved it.

Ready, ready, mark.

We were so excited.

I remember going into Nasa,

taking a series of photos with
my mom and dad after school.

I was seven.

She had her orange jumpsuit on
with the helmet.

I was worried. I was, like,
thinking, like,

"How is her hair going to fit
in there?"

She made everything joyful
all the time.

She was my whole world.

I remember the Columbia mission
being announced.

I mean, I knew them all.

In my class was Dave Brown,
Willie McCool and Laurel Clark.

We were all there at the same time.

You get your blue flight suit...
HE CHUCKLES

..that's pretty exciting.
I mean, you're like, "Yes!"

Yeah. It's a... It's a big deal.

This is like the lifelong dream
for all of us.

I've spent 54 days in space
over four missions.

Yeah, I mean, it's the most fun
thing I've ever done, by far.

There's a lot of risk involved.

But I really believe that
humans are explorers.

You want to see
what's over the next hill,

you want to see
what's across the ocean,

you want to see
what's on the surface of the moon.

Almost like it's in our DNA.

And in this country -

I mean, especially
the United States of America -

I mean, we're really good
at this stuff.

Nasa is a very popular
government agency.

I mean, think about this
for a second -

we sent people to the moon
in the 1960s.

Americans like that we're a country
that does hard things.

APPLAUSE

And Nasa does some hard stuff.

We've got the best scientists
and the best engineers.

Aw, it's beautiful, Mike.
It really is.

They've got the flag up now...

It's about what it means for us
as a nation to lead in space

and lead in this kind of technology.

You know, we have a record
of success.

MUSIC: Kids in America
by Kim Wilde

# Friday night and everyone's moving

# I can feel the heat,
but it's soothing, heading down

# I search for... #

This is a once-in-a-lifetime
happening.

The maiden voyage of
the space shuttle...

Columbia will open a new chapter
in American space travel.

# We're the kids in America
Whoa... #

Did you come here to watch
the space shuttle going off?

Yeah. Ooh!
We've come a long way to see it.

The shuttle is the most complicated
space machine ever built.

It cost $10 billion to develop,
and here at the Cape,

it will show whether or not
it can fly.

I had an emotional feeling
with Columbia

because she was the number one.

She was paving the way
to the utilisation of space

in a more practical way -
cheaper, better.

Previously, rockets were expendable,
one-time use.

But the space shuttle
was reusable in its design,

up to 100 times.

It was a quantum leap forward
in space travel.

The first flight of Columbia...

..there's cars all over the place
and there are people outside.

And I'd been sleeping
in the clover by the car

cos we didn't have a hotel room.

I have binoculars
and I have a camera.

We're three miles away.

MISSION CONTROL: T-minus ten,
nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four...

We've gone for main engine start...
SPECTATORS EXCLAIM

WHISTLING AND CHEERING

And it's up and away.

All of us had been saying,
"Go, go, Columbia, go!"

People had seen Apollo launches
exploring the moon.

The space shuttle reignited
that interest.

It was the pride
of the United States.

I still think it's one
of the most complex machines

ever built by the human race.

History will be made today
when the Space Shuttle Columbia

comes down for the first time
from space.

You can see the faint speck
in the middle of the dark spot.

This was a grand experiment,

because no-one had ever had to land
a spacecraft like a glider before.

This is the single most critical
time for the spacecraft

to see whether...the wings hold up,
the heat tiles stay on,

the structure takes it.

As the shuttle was entering
the Earth's atmosphere,

it would get to about 3,000 degrees
at the highest heating point.

Most metallic structures
without protection

start losing their properties
and may even start melting...

Columbia, you're really
looking good, right on the money.

..so they devised the heat shield,
which was made of tiles

to protect the shuttle
from breaking up during entry.

CHEERING
Welcome home, Columbia.

Beautiful, beautiful!

We can assume their re-entry through
the atmosphere worked like a charm.

CHEERING

The reusable space truck
will be given a free ride

back to the Kennedy Space Center,
where a second launch is planned,

perhaps as early as August.

In the beginning,
there were four operating shuttles -

Columbia, Challenger,
Atlantis and Discovery.

One of the goals was to fly
20 missions a year.

Sometimes, they were
sending satellites.

Quite a few classified missions
for the Department of Defense.

Eventually, they were used
for assembling and building

the International Space Station.

But reusability puts demands
on the design -

that it has to be robust
and resilient

and come back intact
and fully operational.

That's a huge demand.

The mission aboard the orbiter
Columbia is a 24/7 science marathon.

Working in a 2,000-cubic foot lab
attached to the cargo hold,

the crew will study fires,
moss growth,

human prostate cancer cells and
how rats adapt to weightlessness.

In all, there are more than
59 experiments.

My husband, Rick, was the commander
of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Howdy!
LAUGHTER

Never in my wildest dreams did
I think I'd ever meet an astronaut,

much less marry one.

My mother always told me,
when you go out with someone,

to ask them about themselves,
because guys really like that.

SHE LAUGHS
So that's what I did.

And so he told me,
he said that he wanted,

since he was four years old,
that he wanted to be an astronaut.

Hi, my name is Rick Husband.
I'm the commander of STS-107.

We're going to be flying
a 16-day science mission.

I was, I think, probably 10 or 11.

I knew it was a big,
in-charge position

and that he would be the leader
of the team.

You think of something like
Buzz Lightyear in Star Command.

You're like, "Wow, Dad's
the commander of a shuttle!"

OK, let's do like this, you know?

While they were in training,
Dave Brown, one of the astronauts,

came to Rick and asked if it was OK
if he recorded footage of the crew

throughout the mission.

We're just watching our...

No! We're just trying to ignore
our best pal Dave,

who is busy documenting our journey
toward space.

He was an amateur videographer,
but not that amateur.

He was really good at it.

Dr Dave! Man!
This is really above and beyond.

I know. 6.30.

Dave, your camera is affecting me.
SHE LAUGHS

It is? Yeah.
Why?

You know, Rick just...

He wanted to make sure that
the crew was comfortable with it...

Chicken and rice, Italian
vegetables, all in a tortilla.

..which they were.

They trusted Dave. They felt
comfortable with him doing that.

OK, you're on.

Rolling.
Take three, Dave and Laurel.

Action!

We're here in the Wind River
mountains with the crew of STS-107.

Brought to you by the National
Outdoor Leadership School.

Well, Laurel, are you ready?

Dave, my palms are sweaty,

my knees are weak.

I'm ready for an outdoor adventure.

CHEERING, APPLAUSE

The crew went on an outdoor
team-building trip in Wyoming.

Now, Willie's not safe
until we're all safe.

It was, I think,
close to two weeks long.

And it comes around.

Right down into this valley.

My dad had come up with the idea
to help them bond,

and Dave filmed the crew
while they were doing that.

LAUGHTER

This is such a nightmare.

I'm trying to make
these stupid brownies

because everybody wanted brownies
for breakfast.

You're not hungry?

I'm not that hungry.

No? But I would love to have
some breakfast brownies.

That would be delicious.
Well, there's some right here.

SHE LAUGHS

Wow!

Looks kind of like bear scat.

THEY LAUGH

But...you know.

On the trip in Wyoming,
they had to work together as a team.

Mmm!
LAUGHTER

When you're on the space shuttle,
you really have to have a high level

of what they call
behavioural health...

And what do you think, Willie?

..where you're not just
technically competent,

but you're low-maintenance...

..cos you are inherently
in a confined space.

You can't say, "I'm just going to
take a time out and go outside

"and not deal with your, you know,
BS any more."

You would not believe the things
that have happened up there.

There have been fights.

There was a cosmonaut
who talked about

how he was going to kill
his fellow cosmonaut.

So Nasa had started to realise,
"We got to get a handle on this.

"And it's really important."

CHEERING

When they came back, it was like
their bond...

..was forever.

They walked in sync with each other.

It was like, "Left, right,
left, right."

They were the Columbia crew.
They were STS-107.

They were a unit.

ALL: One, two, three!

Excellent!

Woohoo!

Well... Here we are. Here we are.

The EVA team for STS-107.
That's right.

Michael Anderson was my husband.

We got to go watch him,
to look at part of the training,

the underwater experience
to simulate zero gravity.

He was excited.

But if you looked at him,
you would think calm and collected.

But he was excited.

He would tease the kids we were
going to go to Mars as a family.

Halfway he was joking,
but halfway he was thinking,

"Hmm! This would be kind of cool."

Check O2 actuator is in EVA.

He loved it. It was his dream.

Complete VD2.

But he thought about it. I mean,
he thought about the safety issues

and he knew he was in a dangerous
career field.

I'm probably different than
most astronauts.

I really don't enjoy launches.

You know, I think a launch is
a terrible way to get to space.

When you launch in a rocket, you're
not really flying that rocket.

You're just sort of hanging on.

Even though we've gone to great
pains to make it as safe as we can,

there's always the potential
for something going wrong.

You know, so we try not to think
about those things.

We train and try to prepare
for the things that may go wrong.

But there's always that unknown,

and I guess it's that unknown
that I don't like.

I went with Michael to Florida
for the first time

and actually saw the shuttle.

And when I saw it, I was like,
"You really want to get up in this?"

"You really, really, really want to
do this?", I remember saying to him.

Because...

..somehow it didn't look as
glamorous as it did on television.

I was like, "Wow, that's, you know,
the oldest one in the fleet,

"and I don't know about this."

It looked smaller to me.

You know, it looked a little older.

I was like,
"OK, this is getting really real."

And then I remember thinking about
what happened to Challenger.

Space Shuttle Challenger
is just a few seconds away

from blasting off
from the Kennedy Space Center

near Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Let's take a look right now.

CROWD: Five, four, three, two one...
Wooooh!

RADIO: Lift off confirmed.
Lift off.

Engines throttling up,
three engines now at 104%.

Challenger go at throttle up.

Roger, go at throttle up.

CROWD SCREAMS

The vehicle has exploded.

We hear from Launch Control
the vehicle has exploded.

That's the orbiter itself.
The shuttle Challenger has exploded.

We must assume... Contingency.
..that the crew is not alive.

This is unheralded in the history
of the space programme.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have covered
the space shuttle launches

since the very first launch, since
before the first launch itself,

going way back, and nothing
like this has ever happened.

WAILING

It was a sad day for all Americans.

This was our space programme.

This was our national
space programme.

And here they lost their lives
doing it for our country.

When I thought about Challenger,
I talked to Michael.

I said, "You know what?
You do what you're doing,

"I'm glad you're loving
and liking it,

"but you got a wife and two little
kids here if something happens.'

We prayed a lot about it.

He talked to us about his faith,
things like, "Hey, God has got me.

"Like, if something happens,
God is going to take care of me,

"he's going to take care of,
you know, you guys as a family,

"you'll be OK. There are risks
to this. Like, I chose

"a profession that,
you know, is dangerous sometimes."

He was like, "But we don't want
to be fearful about it."

Do you remember in the conversation,
did you nearly say, "I'm not sure,"

or, like, maybe, "Don't"?

How do you stop somebody from doing
something that they've worked

so hard to do and achieve, and
was so dedicated and committed to?

I wouldn't have stopped him.

I was working at Nasa then.

I had done this threat assessment.

Any commercial airliner,
your chances of a bad outcome

are one in a million, probably
closer to one in 10 million.

Scuba diving and flying
in general aviation,

military flying, is one in 100,000.

And flying in a space shuttle?

One in 100. Your chances of
a bad outcome are one in 100.

Doing OK, ma'am?
I'm OK. Great.

I told Laurel and she said to me,
she goes,

"Well, if it really is that risky,
what doesn't Nasa tell that to me?"

And I said, "Well, I don't know,

"but I'm at Nasa and this
is the analysis I've done."

You know, if somebody told me,

"Hey, you can go
on this roller-coaster ride

"and there's one in 100
chance that you'll die,"

well, there's no chance
in the world,

no chance in hell,
I would do that.

Flying on the space shuttle,

the benefit we get for
our country is enormous.

You know, I think a lot of us feel

that this is a tremendous amount
of risk...

..and there will be, you know,

accidents and people will lose
their lives,

but I also think that people
generally think

it's not going to be them.

Nasa has grounded its four shuttles
until at least September

because of small cracks that have
been found in the fuel lines.

The concern is the cracks could grow

and splinter
into hazardous chunks of metal.

They got a bunch of us,
like, a dozen engineers,

to go fly down to Kennedy Space
Center to go look at cracks.

There was copious amounts
of engineering discussion

and testing going on.

If a main engine were to explode,
that would destroy the vehicle,

it'd be out of control.
We'd lose the vehicle and the crew.

It's too dangerous
to fly any shuttle

until we get a handle on this.

It grounded the entire fleet,
including Columbia.

They found a crack
in one of our older vehicles

that are undergoing some rehab work,

and so there's concern, you know
obviously, if there's maybe cracks

in some of the other vehicles.

It was, like, delayed
and delayed and delayed.

You're kind of glad
that they're dealing with

whatever the issue is and
you're hoping that everything's OK.

And, you know, it makes it
a little bit more nerve-racking.

There were many, many meetings
and many thousands of hours spent

on this, but Nasa management and
engineering came up with solutions.

Once these propulsion cracks
were fixed and repaired,

we can resume flight.

But I had oversight
into all the missions

and there were numerous problems
with the other shuttle fleet.

They were just, one after another,
it just wouldn't end -

the damages and things
that were out of whack.

The thermal protection system,
the tiles,

were being damaged every flight.

One time, a large piece of foam

from the gigantic fuel tank

dented the solid rocket boosters
on liftoff.

Another time, a vulture
hit the tank.

If it hit the windows? Catastrophe.

This is a complex vehicle that
always needs a lot of caretaking.

I'm Sean O'Keefe.
I was the administrator

of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration -

the leader of the agency
at that time.

Every single mission
that I was there for

was scrubbed, rescheduled,

delayed because something
wasn't exactly right.

What did catch my attention
in terms of the shuttle,

from the very first time
I saw them up close,

was this was 1970s technology.

This was a lot of moving parts -

a lot of mechanical moving parts.

And any time you have that happen,

it's...challenging
to keep it flying.

We don't have too much time
because launch is coming.

36, 37 days to launch

and it's starting to get exciting.

Why is it exciting?

What do you mean,
why is it exciting? To go to space.

For the first time at least, for us,
for me, it's exciting.

Three weeks from the launch,
we were flying from Houston

to Albuquerque for Christmas,

Iain and Laurel and I.

It was my dad flying the plane and
me and our dog in the back seat.

And we start hitting
some of this turbulence,

and all of a sudden the plane
gets into this, like, downwash.

It's going down like this.

Well, I mean, we just crashed.

It was just, you know,
bam, slap down!

And the fact that we survived is,
to this day,

something I cannot explain.

I think it messed Iain up
because the closer we got

to the flight itself,
he kept saying,

"I don't want you to leave, Mom.
I want you to stay here on Earth."

Basically, he said,
"I don't want you to go."

I begged her pretty desperately
not to go.

I was... I was very emotional,

and I was crying to her.

Stop... Tried to stop her
from leaving.

How hard do you think
it was for Laurel?

Oh, deeply difficult.

I think that you couldn't quantify
the magnitude of their love.

Motherhood's been incredible.

And I tell my son all the time

that my most important job
is being his mother.

I relied on my mom for so much.

So much.

How much did she love being a mom?

Well, I think she loved that
more than being an astronaut.

I think that she loved that more
than anything else in her life.

And if she'd pulled out
at that point,

how would that have impacted
the mission?

Oh, it would have cancelled it,

or delayed it at the very least.

Because the crew members
are so specifically trained,

there's no backups.

I can't even imagine the quandary
that she would have faced,

having to decide that.

But she was committed
and determined to get the job done.

These guys have trained, you know,
forever for this mission.

And the last thing they want is for
them to catch something and be sick.

That just would be catastrophic
for the...for the mission.

So they put them
in quarantine a week prior.

The children weren't allowed
to be around them.

I had to say goodbye to him
before he went to quarantine.

And I remember hugging his waist

because that's where I came to him
when I was 12.

That moment, actually right
here in the kitchen,

I remember crying and just knowing

how much I would miss him.

We drove him to quarantine,

and we all said goodbye
and, like, had hugs and kisses,

and it was a really sweet moment.

And it was just us, and that was it,
he was off.

This is going to be good.

Ilan just walks into the kitchen,

starts looking in cupboards,
starts grabbing stuff,

and it just miraculously happened.
He transformed it.

Cheers.

We're almost there!

The last time Iain saw his mom was
in Houston, in the crew quarters.

And actually they're supposed to not
see their kids for seven days,

and we snuck him into crew quarters,

unbeknownst to anybody else,

for him to get a hug from his mom,

and this would have been probably
three days before the launch.

She was just reassuring me
that it was going to be OK.

And I'll miss you, too.
But, you know, I'll be back.

It was a very long hug.

You know, maybe...

I don't know if they knew
it was the last one or not.

Who could deprive
a child of that from his mom?

APPLAUSE

Absolutely thrilled to be here.

Thrilled to go do a lot of work,

see some incredible things
and spend some more time

with this great group
of people I'm with today.

I left Washington to head down
to Florida to witness the launch.

Had an opportunity to
visit with the crew.

The launch of the Columbia occurred
a year and a half after 9/11.

At that time, I was in briefings
in the White House

to identify what
are the high-value targets,

what are the things that would be
an attraction for terrorists

to just get the attention
of the American people?

One of them was a shuttle.

But this one I looked
at more carefully

because of the presence
of the Ilan Ramon.

Ilan Ramon says he is uncomfortable
in the spotlight,

but none of his
six shuttle crewmates

is the first astronaut from Israel.

The fact that he was on board that
flight was considered to be

a higher security concern given
the nature of the Middle East

relations and tensions and all
the other things that go with this.

Anybody from Al-Qaeda, from Isis,
you know, the extremists,

would love to make a statement
about, why don't we take that out

as a way to make a statement
across the globe

of what we're capable of doing?

I'm not thinking myself or my family
as targets, but as human beings,

and this flight especially
is going to take care

of a better life on Earth.

I was 12 years old.

I remember, before the launch,
there was a lot of security.

We were taken from place to place

and being escorted with
different cop cars.

Security following the bus.

My dad didn't want us
to be worried about anything,

but we knew it was risky.

The post-9/11 regimen
remains in place.

A huge no-fly zone around the
launchpad, patrolled by fighters,

enhanced radars,
surface-to-air missiles

and the launch time kept secret
until the day before.

There were gunboats out there.

There's, you know,
frogmen in the water.

They had snipers on the roof
of the hotel

as well as mounted police
all up and down the beach.

You could easily hide a sniper
in a swamp out there

with a high-powered rifle,
and a couple of hits

in the wrong spot on the shuttle
and...bad day.

This is shuttle launch control

and everything is going well

and as planned with the countdown
for the launch of Columbia

and shuttle mission STS-107.

Today's launch represents the 28th
flight of the shuttle Columbia and

the 113th shuttle flight overall
in Nasa's space shuttle programme.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

Good morning. Morning, Ilan.

How are you doing?

All right. We all ready this
morning? I think I am, we are.

How about you? Are you ready?

I'm ready. I've got the easy part.

Shalom.
Ready for the big day?

Pliers...tethers...

Hey, Dave... Dreaming of
sleeping in space.

..give me the camera
a little bit.

Yeah, I want to take
a picture with Laurel.

In 2003, I was responsible
for all the astronauts.

I was here supporting.
I was an astronaut myself.

Every time you get suited up,
there is anticipation.

I don't know, anxiety, excitement.

Yeah, launch day is pretty special.

HELMET CLICKS

Good sound. Yeah.

OK. Go ahead and close your visor...

OK. All right. Here we go.

Every launch, we do this really
strange thing where we play this

card game, this poker game,

because it's been done since
Neil Armstrong.

You win. You win. No, that's good.
It's good. It's good to win.

One step closer to launch here.

Thinking, you know, when I was
a little kid, Neil Armstrong

was standing here in this room
before he went to the moon.

it's incredibly exciting.

There's nothing I can
think of that's more exciting.

All right. And the time is...

Everything is timed very
specifically and they actually

have a...you know, it was an old
analogue clock with a marker on it.

And you just got to wait.
You want to go.

You know the risk and you know what
you're getting ready to do.

You know, if you don't, you probably
shouldn't be in that business.

Rick Husband got the whole crew
together inside the suit room

before they went out
the door into the hallway.

And they all got together,
arms around each other, head bowed

and said a prayer.

Lord, please be with our crew
and take us safely on this mission.

Thank you for bringing us
to this point. ALL: Amen.

Christian, Hindu, Jew,
all together as one,

as they walked out of the suit room.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

All right! You can do it!

All right!

And our astronauts coming out now

as they're making their way
to the astronaut van.

Commander Rick Husband,
payload specialist Ilan Ramon,

pilot William McCool and mission
specialists Michael Anderson,

David Brown, Laurel Clark,
Kalpana Chawla.

Morning, Ronnie. Morning.
How you doing? Doing great.

LAUGHTER

All right, we're going to go today.
There's our helicopter.

There it is.

You have a good one, sir. Thank you.
Take care.

OK, everybody on? Yep.
195, here we come.

OK, everybody, high five.
Here we go. Whoo!

Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut...
Woohoo! All right.

Morning, gentlemen,
welcome to the 195.

We're going to have
a wonderful day today.

When you're up there
at the 195-foot level

and you're getting ready to get
in the vehicle, it's pretty amazing.

I mean, you're all suited up
and this is for real.

And the vehicle,
it's venting, it's creaking.

It's like it's alive.

You just can't believe in a couple
of hours you're going to be

inside this thing
blasting off into space.

This thing is big.

It's big.
It's really big.

For me, if there was any
apprehension, it was then.

I mean... But you can't say, "No,
I don't think I want to do this."

You know, you're pretty much,
you're going.

How are you? How you doing?

Ilan. Good to see you.

Thank you. Good to see you.

The final folks to speak to them,

that's the astronaut support
personnel and the crew

that's strapping them
into the vehicle.

And the Nasa test director,
Jeff Spaulding,

has given approval for the crew
to begin entry into the vehicle.

Once they're in their seats,
they will be, basically,

laying on their backs.

Husband climbing in somewhat
difficult, cramped quarters there.

Next to enter the vehicle will be
Ilan Ramon,

and he is currently
taking his seat on the mid-deck.

They help get their harnesses on,

get them strapped in
and, you know,

when they close the hatch,
that's it.

ON RADIO: Yes, sir. Do I have
a go to close the hatch?

You have a go to close the hatch.
Copy that.

Here at
the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida,

a lot of concern about security
with the first Israeli astronaut

on board Columbia for this
16-day science mission.

I'm there to cover that launch,
like we always were.

I'm three miles away, which
is as close as they let anybody.

28th launch for Columbia,
the 113th shuttle mission launch.

I'm always thinking about what I
would say if things go really wrong,

and... Because that's my
responsibility, to be that person.

One of the experiments on board
the shuttle...

So you sort of have to go down
the list of threats, if you will.

You know, 9/11, Ilan Ramon,
did they really fix those cracks?

And then it's up to, you know,
a million movable parts

all working in synchronicity,
which is kind of...the fact that it

ever worked at all
is pretty amazing.

Back here in the space shuttle
flight control room,

the ascent team of flight
controllers, who have been

on console since about 3:30
this morning, monitoring Columbia's

systems in preparation for the
first shuttle launch of the year.

The ascent team is
led by flight director

LeRoy Cain for today's launch.

OK, folks.

Going to ops one, count from 20.

The launch day's unique,
whether it's in

the Launch Control Center in Florida
or in Mission Control in Houston.

You could commit to launch
or you could scrub

and have to come back
and try again another day.

As a flight controller
in Mission Control,

STS-107 was my second mission.

For me, it was always when you
got at the T-minus ten-minute hold

and you give the final
go/no go for launch,

that is kind of the moment
where you realise

that this is about to get real.

Go/no go for launch. FIDO? Go.

Guidance? Go. GC? Go. Prop? Go.

GNC? Go. MMACS? Go. EGIL? Go.

EECOM? Go. FAO? Go. Payloads? Go.

For me, personally, I could
feel my adrenaline gland

just go and then my heart rate
pick up a little bit,

and, mentally, I would just have to
use a breathing technique.

Get ready for a G1 launch target.

There's a lot of responsibility.

You're getting ready to launch a
space shuttle with humans on board.

It is not an easy business.

Houston, flight is go.

By then, it's too late to figure out

whether you're ready to do
it or not.

You're committed at that point,

so now it's focus on what's
ahead of you.

The only person who was
authorised to launch

the shuttle itself
was the launch director

at the Kennedy Space Center.

On the moment on which
everything lined up

and the launch director was
convinced they were ready to go

for launch, that's when he said,
"Go for launch,"

pressed the button and that was it.

The countdown clock will
resume on my mark.

Three, two, one. Mark.

T-minus nine minutes and counting.

So, does everybody stand up
as soon as it launches?

We had 300 or 400 invited
guests to the launch,

and so each family had that amount.

It is a huge event.

The strongest emotion is just
excitement. I mean, we're just...

There's a huge buzz.
I mean, it's really amazing.

We were in this big building
and they had us

standing on the roof
to watch everything.

So we were just kind of waiting
all together and, you know,

all the kids were kind of talking
and playing

until things kind of started
counting down.

Go for orbiter access arm retract.

T-minus five minutes and counting.

And we have a go for APU start.

The auxiliary power unit
activation has been recorded.

I do remember being outside
and looking

at the shuttle getting ready
to take off.

He was adamant now to me that
he didn't want his mum to go

and then he started crying.

The whole launch was him
crying. It was awful.

T-minus three minutes,
25 seconds and counting.

And final aerial surface checks
of the orbiter's wing elevons

and rudder are being
completed at this time.

I remember, for a brief second,
looking at the orbiter

on the launchpad
and I just thought,

"I have absolutely no control
over how this is going to go."

There's just such
a mixture of emotion.

There's pride, excitement, fear.

I remember my mum
stroking my hair, like...

And I think that was, like, sort
of a comfort for her and for me.

And the gaseous oxygen vent hood
will be slowly retracted

away from the top
of the external tank.

You feel it.

And it's, "My husband's in that...

"with all that fuel
and all that power."

So you trust everybody has done
their jobs

that they're supposed to do.
You trust the shuttle works well,

you trust the Lord over and above
everything. You trust the Lord.

Columbia, for the flight crew,
close and lock your visors

and initiate O2 flow.

For the first two-plus minutes
of the mission,

with the solid
rocket boosters attached,

there's no option for abort.

You have to wait till they're done
and burned out and cut away.

That is a blackout zone.
That's a death zone.

No matter what happens in that
scenario, you cannot do anything.

That was when the Challenger went
down, was in that blackout zone.

T-minus one minute and counting.

And we're coming up on a go
for our auto sequence start.

And then the moment came, you know,

the moment where the launch
was coming.

Each family came together
and kind of were hugging

and holding each other, you know,
just really getting emotional

about this, and then the launch
sequence starts to happen.

Whoo!

11, ten, nine, eight,

seven, six, five, four, three,

two, one.
CHEERING

The weird thing is that
you see that flash

and you see that smoke
coming up and it's like,

"Whoa! Well, that sucks.
There's no sound."

And so you're like, "What the..."

And then it's "Ba-boom!"

LOUD BANG

CHEERING

You don't quite expect
it to be as powerful.

107! 107!

You feel your insides shaking and
vibrating from this huge sound.

Everybody is just so emotional
and it's...

..it's hard not to, not to cry.

ALL CHEER

For me, it's like
The Star-Spangled Banner playing.

It's incredibly visceral
and emotive and inspirational.

The international research mission
finally under way.

You sit there and you look at that
trail of fire and you think,

"God, there's seven people
on top of that."

Every time that kind of gets me.

Columbia travelling
at 1,800 miles an hour.

You're watching seven
of your closest friends on this

ball of flame going off into space.

My heart's going like this
and I had tears running down.

I mean, it's very emotional.

Columbia's three main engines

draining a half a ton
of fuel per second,

heading towards space on the first
shuttle mission of the year.

You know how on TV it looks like
you're going up really smoothly?

No. Not at all.

It's kind of...
It's kind of a wild ride.

And there's a lot of vibration.

You know, my first flight, it was
so much, I thought to myself,

"There's something wrong here."

I was like, "This does not feel
right to me.

"Cannot possibly feel like this."

Solid rocket booster
separation confirmed.

Guidance now converging.

Columbia's onboard computers
commanding the main engine nozzles

to gently swivel, aiming
the shuttle for a precise target

in space for main engine cutoff.

I was, like, more nervous.

You know, you see the plumes
of smoke and the fire

and you kind of know what's going
on, but you're just kind of like

in the back of your head,
"Is it supposed to do that?
Is that correct? OK."

Like, "There they go. Oh, that's
so high." You know, it just...

All these thoughts and then all
of a sudden they're just gone

and you're just still hearing it.

When I lost sight of the shuttle
going up,

that's when I kind of felt
like a little sting from it.

You know, just like a feeling of,

"Man, how could she
just leave like that?"

Columbia in its preliminary orbit.

I remember looking at the planet
for the first time.

I mean, I still have the whole image
burned into my brain

where you look over and you
see this big, round, blue ball.

And it's just incredible to see
the planet as what it is,

you know, for the very first time.
You know, a globe.

And that is just a wild thing,
a wild thing to see.

Everything in great shape
as the orbiter is now

settled into an orbit about
143 nautical miles above the earth.

Standing by for further
activity on board.

Space shuttle Columbia
is safe in orbit

and here at the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida,

Nasa and the US Air Force breathing
a collective sigh of relief.

The perfect launch for Columbia,
a perfect climb to orbit.

They're in orbit and that's when
you're, you know, you're home free.

So it was like...a sigh
of relief when they,

when they were, you know,

up in space and it feels like,
"Phew! They've made it."

Let's take a look at the view
from orbit.

This is 225km above us.

I stayed in place until they
were...the main engine cut off,

because anything can happen till
then, and once they turn off

those main engines
and they're in orbit,

you know, you're in a relatively
safe situation.

You can safely walk
away from the camera and...

..they started quickly playing
the launch replays and...

And that was when we saw it.

This is Mission Control,
Houston, continuing to watch

replays of Columbia's launch, which
occurred on time and flawlessly,

just 28 minutes ago from the Kennedy
Space Center's launchpad 39A.

I was in our truck.

Producer called me in, said,
"You've got to look at this."

It was kind of a grainy image
but you see this...

this, poof! Like a...

Like you dropped a bag of flour
on the ground and it all

floated into the air.

Didn't take much of a telephoto
to show this kind of explosion,

but it did not look good at all.

It looked bad.

BIRDS SQUAWK

LINDA HAM: OK, good morning and
welcome to the first STS-107 MMT.

Great launch yesterday

and I'm sure everyone's real excited
about getting on orbit here

and finally getting under way
with this science mission.

We just want to report everybody's
all smiles here. That's good.

The second day,
I drive into work kind of euphoric

because another launch,
another successful launch.

You know the
flight director's office

in the Mission Control Center
in Houston is working with them.

They're... Everything's good.

This is the first mission
in a while

that is completely dedicated
to science.

It's the first one in several years.

It's a 16-day flight
with a dual shift.

We have a crew of seven.

Four will be up on one shift and
three will be up on the other shift

so that we can work 24 hours a day.

I walked into the analysis lab

to start reviewing film
from the launch.

I love film analysis, I love
sitting in there doing that work.

In 2003, my team was in charge
of the neighbourhood of 130 cameras.

There's cameras
on the mobile launcher,

there's cameras on the launchpad,

there's layers of cameras to give
you different distances.

You want your imagery
to be able to show you

what is going on
on the exterior of the vehicle.

So, we started
the film at the beginning.

We're watching this lift-off,
you see the roll manoeuvres,

beautiful blue sky.

We do the normal review

and we start pointing out all
the things that we normally see.

You use the shadows
from the projector behind you,

so you see these fingers that, you
know, it's like shadow puppets.

And we got to 81 seconds

and then we see this object
come off

of the external tank area.

It moved down
and then striked the vehicle,

then exploded into a white cloud.

INTERVIEWER: What was your reaction?
Ah...

Inside your head?

My reaction was, "Oh, shit."

ARCHIVE: The shuttle
is the most complicated

space machine ever built.

The world's greatest
electric flying machine.

It has been
a bad day for NASA.

A sense of tragedy
in the space programme

and as word spreads across
the nation...

There are no simple
and easy answers.

We are doing everything
we possibly can

to find out what caused
this accident.

All the warning signs were there.

This didn't have to happen.

We let it happen.

# Everybody was kung-fu fighting

# Those kids were fast as lightning

# In fact, it was a little bit
frightening... #

Columbia, Houston.

A very good morning to the Red team.

To Rick, Laurel, KC and Ilan.

That music was
Kung-Fu Fighting,

selected especially for you
by your dedicated training team.

Is it turned on?

Good morning to all and a special
good morning to my wife Rona,

the love of my life.

I remember myself going
to sleep and imagining

where he is right now.

"I wonder where he is right now?
He's somewhere over us.

"Maybe going around in circles,
around the Earth."

It's surreal.

These seven people who are,
you know, living in space.

Eating and working
and going to the bathroom and...

..and seeing Earth from space.

MAN: Wow.

RICK HUSBAND: Well, actually,
things are going really well

and things have been working well.

Columbia is in great shape

and working absolutely perfectly.

We had a great ride to orbit.

After the launch,
we came home for the next 16 days

we knew that the crew
was going to be in space.

By that point, I mean,
I turned on NASA TV here

and just started
watching the mission.

Next up for the Blue shift
was a blood draw experiment.

Here, Laurel is telling Mike this
isn't going to hurt her a bit.

I think God has put a desire
of pioneering in us

and exploring, and just to see
someone to be able to follow through

with that, and to that level,
is so admirable.

But more than anything, I just loved
listening to Rick's voice.

I loved listening to him talk back
and forth with Mission Control.

Looking at that film,

we were all discussing, "How big
are we talking about a problem?

"How much damage
are we talking about?"

Worst case would have been
damage all the way down

to the skin of the vehicle.

That would have given us
a problem during the landing.

And what does that, in human terms,
what does that really mean?

Well, that probably would have been
loss of vehicle and loss of crew.

So, I went to see Wayne, my boss.

Based on my 20-plus years
of experience,

I can tell you every shuttle flight
that flew had issues.

People came to me as a flight
director or as manager every day.

In this case,
Bob Page knocked on my door,

came into my office and said...

"We've got a problem.

"This is the largest strike of a
vehicle that we have ever seen."

He's a little bit
of a high-energy guy,

so it wasn't unusual,
I didn't think.

But he had a little video
clip that he showed me.

It's really hard to tell
if anything bad had happened.

I mean, this is insulating foam.

It's lightweight.

So, the orange thing
is the external tank.

It's carrying cryogenically
cold liquid oxygen

and hydrogen and it's going to sit
out on the launchpad

in the sunshine.

You don't want that to
start boiling off.

So, over the outside of the tank

there's this spray-on
insulating foam.

Similar to what you have if you
have a leak

and you get the stuff
from the hardware store

and you spray it
around a windowsill.

Cheap, very effective.

But it's got this property that,

as you go through supersonic
flight in the atmosphere,

bits of it come off.

INTERVIEWER: So, foam falling off
during launch

was something that had
happened before?

Yes, it happened all the time.

Maybe not in these big chunks,

but it did happen all the time.

The question is, "How bad
of shape is the orbiter in?"

And Bob said,

"I really wish there was some
way to get more information."

I knew this mission
passed over places

where there were
some high-altitude telescopes.

These are looking at stars, so if
you want to look at the orbiter,

you could probably get the entire
orbiter fit in the field of view

and have extremely good resolution.

And I said, "Well, I don't really
know much about that, Bob.

"We'll have to check."

And so, I got the
assurance from Wayne

that he would make some calls
and he would see what could be done,

and things were put into motion.

Did the crew know at this point?

No.

You don't want to alarm
the crew that early.

They had just gotten onto orbit.

They have a job to do.

When we have the complete story,

then that's when we pass it
on to them.

STATIC CRACKLES
Mom?

Mom?

Miss you.

Bye-bye!

We talked using the early
televideo conferencing capability

and super low-tech bandwidth.

It's ratty com
but it's a very special time.

It was a huge relief being
able to...

..see her again.

But I really couldn't
comprehend that she was in space.

Like, it didn't make
sense to me at all.

HE GIGGLES

It felt like counting down
to Christmas,

waiting for her to get back.

In the NASA world,
people don't talk in terms of,

"It's life or death".

You use the terms,
"Threat to the vehicle and crew,"

or, "Risk to the vehicle and crew".

It might have more power and more
punch if we talk life and death.

But we don't.

There's an old
saying in the space business,

"The first story's never right,"
right?

So, you get the story,
something happened.

It could be the end of the world,
it could be nothing.

So, we were all concerned.

It wasn't like we were going
to do anything immediately

other than get the data and we will
hand it over to the engineers

that are standing ready
to do those sort of analysis.

The second day of the mission
was just an ordinary day for me.

I was ready to go home about
five o'clock on a Friday evening.

PHONE RINGS

And then, I got
a call from my manager.

She said, "Rodney, do you know that

"a large piece of foam
hit the left wing?"

And I think I gasp and I said, "Ooh"
or "Ahh". I made some exclamation.

"No, I did not hear that."

And she said, "They have
just released a video."

Every time I watched the video,

I'm looking at portions
of it or a sector of it,

just to see if I can glean one
more piece of detail out of it.

And the question I had,

"What is that cloud?
That expanding white stuff?"

One can't help but ask, "Is that
part of the wing coming apart?"

ROCK MUSIC PLAYS

Columbia, Houston.

Good morning to the Red team.

I was thinking about this
foam strike all weekend.

And I thought, "Can't we get
the astronauts to look through

"this side hatch window?"

There's a little window right
here, this little dark circle.

Could they have looked back
to this area in here

to see if there's any damage -
debris, residue, anything?

What I was expecting is
you first look with your eyes.

Just look.

And then,
if they'd seen something unusual,

they would have
probably used binoculars.

They have binoculars on board,

and they have
telephoto lenses and cameras.

They would have probably photo
documented this whole thing

and sent it down to the ground.

Once the crew has
reported something,

the ground responds, must respond.

It was a very easy thing to do

and the crew
would have done it happily.

So, let's see.
Rodney sent me an email.

"We know that the Remote
Manipulator System arm and cameras

"are not available, but what
about the left side hatch window?"

He's questioning whether
there's been any action

to ask the crew to look for damage.

LAUREL CLARK: OK, well,
good morning or good evening,

as the case goes for all you guys

working around the
clock there in Houston.

PAUL SHACK: You have to understand,
NASA works on procedures.

We have a mission plan.

Red shift
are just finishing up their day.

Any deviation needs to
be evaluated and assessed

on how it will impact everything.

MISSION CONTROL:
Laurel, just to be advised,

you have about two
minutes of video left.

To deviate from the processes

and the procedures
you'd need to have a reason.

And the reason needs data.

It's not just,
"I have a bad feeling about this."

And I got no reply to my email.

My request was never answered.

Columbia, this is CNN,
how do you read me?

Hey, CNN, we've got
you loud and clear.

Stand by and we'll have you
on the telly here very shortly.

Say hello to the crew of
the space shuttle Columbia,

now travelling above the
Pacific at 17,300 miles an hour.

150 miles above us.

Waving to us. Let's give
you an idea of who's who...

O'BRIEN, VOICEOVER: I remember
interviewing the crew in space.

..Rick Husband, the commander,
second mission. Laurel Clark...

Prepping for that interview,

I thought about the foam
strike and how to handle it.

But on launch day,

when I saw that footage,

I wasn't sure what
to think about it.

I'm not a rocket scientist.

So, I called to somebody who
I know very well at NASA.

I said, "Help me understand how
worried I should be for this."

And he said, "Ah, it's foam,
it's very light material.

"Probably hasn't caused any damage."

INTERVIEWER: So, they're telling
you it's nothing to worry about.

But did you still have
a little concern? I was...

It nagged me the whole mission.

Colonel Ramon. I'm curious, was
the launch what you expected?

I was thinking about the foam.

I just didn't know how to, in a
five-minute interview, set that up.

Are all these experiments working?

They couldn't all be
working as planned.

Well,
things are going very smoothly.

As expected,
there's some minor glitches.

I had gone through this process
of convincing myself

that it was going to be OK.

All right, we're going to
have to leave it at that.

Goodness, look at that little
chalice going by there!

But I had this sinking feeling.

I just... I just didn't feel right.

We spent the weekend
analysing this film.

We estimated the size of the foam.

16 inches across, 18 inches long.

Suitcase size.

So, it's a big chunk of foam,
moving at 750mph.

But in the end,
what we did not know

was the condition
of the vehicle post-strike.

How much thermal protection
system would be left?

Returning from space,

a craft that is going 17,500
miles an hour heats up gases,

and very hot gases
become something we call plasma.

The shuttle is enveloped in this
inferno and it's kind of beautiful.

But, obviously, you want to be
protected from it.

Well, they came to the conclusion
that the best way to deal with that

was to arrange a system of
tiles to cover the shuttle.

All of the black here
shown is all tiles.

And these tiles are made
of a silica fibre material,

which is very heat resistant.

I can show you.

This is a test tile.

There are about 31,000
of them altogether.

And we hope those tiles will stay on

when the orbiter comes back
into the atmosphere,

because otherwise
the craft itself could be damaged.

Well, if you don't have
any tiles on the bottom,

the vehicle's going to burn up.

If you have a lot of tiles on the
bottom, the vehicle won't burn up.

REPORTER: But if something
should happen to the tile,

is there anything at
all that you can do?

During the development of the
space shuttle, in the 1970s,

there was quite an effort
to develop a way to repair

damaged tiles on orbit.

It was a huge effort

and it was an utter failure.

They could not develop anything.

And that was one of the
"accepted risks" of flying in space.

I knew the one tool we had was
changing the way entry is done.

You can change the angle
of attack coming in

so you can lessen
the heat in certain areas.

But you know the calendar
is ticking down.

LINDA HAM: OK. Good morning.
We're ready for roll.

The biggest misimpression
I see in movies and whatnot

is that there's a few guys sitting
around a table making decisions.

It's not like that.

In a meeting,
there's 20, 30 people in the room.

There's people joining from Kennedy,

there's people
from Huntington Beach, California,

a representative from engineering,
a representative from the crew.

The chairman of the meeting
was Linda Ham.

She basically ran this mission.

She was effectively

the deputy to Ron Dittemore,

the program manager
in those days.

Linda has excellent judgment,

can grasp complicated
problems very quickly.

She was the first woman to be
certified as a flight director.

Linda was recalling STS-112,
a flight, two flights before.

MISSION CONTROL:
We have go for main engine start.

Two, one,
we've got booster ignition,

and lift-off of the
space shuttle Atlantis.

STS-112 had...

..a very similar piece
of foam come off

from almost the same location.

But in that case,

the foam hit
a solid rocket booster

and put a dent in it.

The foam travelled, travelled down.

It struck right here.

These three lines.

But, of course,
solid rocket boosters disconnect.

They splash down in the ocean.

It didn't hit the orbiter,

so it was no effect to the flight.

The management team,
they analysed it

and came up with the conclusion that
no safety of flight issue existed.

MISSION CONTROL: Welcome back
to Earth, Atlantis.

And congratulations on a
truly spectacular mission.

But we dodged the
bullet on that one.

The difference with Columbia
is that the foam hit the orbiter,

but you can't see
where on the wing it hit

and how big the damage
to the orbiter may be.

A special team was forming and
I was told that I would be on it.

The mission management
wanted to know how bad it is.

No damage, minimal damage,
or grave damage?

In that room, on the first meeting,

there were probably 12 to 15 people.

They were the best
experts in different fields.

But all we knew was

this was foam
and it hit the left wing.

But WHERE on the left wing,
we did not know.

This is why we naturally
came to the conclusion,

we cannot initiate a credible
analysis

until we know damage location
and extent of damage.

There's nothing credible
we can initiate.

We must have another piece of data,
another image.

We knew that performing a spacewalk
would have been very dangerous.

Spacewalks are always
highly choreographed.

They always go to places
where they have handrails,

where they've had a
chance to practise.

In this case, people would
have been just going out there

and hanging a metal ladder
off the side of the vehicle

where it's going to bang around,
while somebody climbs down there

to see if there's
something there to see.

You're talking about doing something
that very well could have caused

damage to an orbiter
that might be undamaged.

I knew that the military satellites
at that time were extremely good.

There were stories like they could
read licence plates from space.

We have quite a fleet of
spy satellites out there

and most are trying to,
at that time,

chase down terrorists in
Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever.

Aiming it at the shuttle
was a possibility.

That's why the whole group thought
it was a good idea.

"Let's ask for military assets."

"The meeting participants all agreed

"we will always
have big uncertainties

"until we get definitive, better,

"clearer photos of the
wing and body underside."

So in bold face, I put,

"Can we petition (beg) for
outside agency assistance?"

INTERVIEWER: But even
with the satellite images,

what were you hoping
would be achieved?

Once you have this proof,

if there were damage,

then you have experts
just flowing in.

Next thing, you tell the crew.

By informing the crew, they're
now part of the solution.

They had tools.
They had cutting instruments.

You take the available materials,

take the Spacehab apart.

You improvise.

You stuff the hole,

if there was a hole,

with materials that
will delay peak heating.

Then you can you talk about
altering the entry trajectory.

Or if this had been publicised,

the Russians might have
sent up an empty Soyuz.

We did the Apollo 13 scenario.

We would have tried something.

But first, you need the images.

Um...

I thought Rodney was asking
for something that was

out of my ability to obtain.

So, I went to my boss.

I said, "Some engineers
want photographs."

You know, there's uncertainty.

I gave her the facts
and she just said,

"Well, they're still
doing their analysis.

"When they come back
with their answer,

"we'll see what it is,
and then we'll ask."

So, she didn't say, "No."

What she said was,
"Let's get the analysis

"and then, make a further
decision if necessary."

# ..Means no worries

# For the rest of your days

# It's our problem-free

# Philosophy

# Hakuna matata... #

MISSION CONTROL: Good morning, Blue.

That was Hakuna Matata, by
the Baha Men, going out to Mike.

And it was picked
especially for Dad by the kids.

MIKE ANDERSON: Good morning,
Houston. What a wonderful song.

And I'd really like
to thank my kids for that one,

both Sydney and Kaycee.

And it's a really good day to wake
up today and nothing to worry about,

and Blue shift is ready to start
another day of science on orbit.

You know, as a kid, your
imagination just like, runs wild.

I'm like, "Do they just float
and sleep?" Or, you know,

"Does he get to go
out in actual space?

"Did he see aliens?"

Mostly I just
thought like he was an explorer.

Kind of like, I don't know,
like a space Indiana Jones.

You know, we make it a point
to get out and go to schools

and talk to kids all the time.

And when I do that,
I really try to let them

know what it was like for me
when I was a kid growing up.

And how I had this dream of
one day becoming an astronaut.

And that really, if you work hard
and you're always persistent,

you can really make
those dreams come true.

So, I always try to give that

message to the kids
when I talk to them.

He wanted to always be
involved in something that was

kind of bigger than him,

that contributed to society,

that had a purpose.

It was fun to watch him. He looked
like he was enjoying himself.

The crew looked like they were
doing what they needed to be doing

and everything was
going off really well.

And I didn't know, at that time,

that anything
concerning had happened.

There were people that did,
though, but I wasn't one of them.

I was in my office in Florida,

and I got a phone call from the head

of what we call
"systems integrations."

He's an engineer who
I respect very highly.

And he said, "Hey, we really
don't have all the information

"we'd like to have
on this debris strike.

"Do you know of anybody that's got
a way to get better pictures?"

Now I had this engineer
as well as Bob,

asking me to see if I can
find out some more information.

NASA does not own any military
satellites but, at that time,

we had a close working relationship
with the Patrick Air Force Base.

So, I put in a request with them.

INTERVIEWER: How hard could it
be to take a few photographs?

I'm not going to pretend
that it's easy.

I do appreciate the preparation
that would have to go into it.

One would have to
interrupt the mission

to get the right lighting,
to make sure you're over...

The right satellite is in position.

Then now, you have an
army of people on the ground.

We have to reorient the shuttle

for the proper exposure
angles and all that.

And to do that means
they may have to terminate

their science experiments.

In a program manager's mind

that's responsible for getting
shuttles up there on schedule,

if you interrupt
the science mission,

you have the ire of all the people

and the science objectives
were now ruined,

and that looks badly on NASA.

I think that weighed on him, too.

WAYNE HALE: A little bit later
in the day, in the afternoon,

I got a call from
Linda and she said,

"Hey, I heard that you were
trying to get some pictures,

"and I've checked around and
nobody has a requirement for us

"to get any more information.
The engineers have all they need."

What she was telling me
is that none of the managers

was willing to stand up and say,

"We really need to have more
information."

And at that time, I took that as,
well, she was in Houston.

The engineers that are doing
the analysis are there,

she's probably been over.

But she said,
"I want you to turn this off

"because we don't need to bother
those other people."

"OK."

INTERVIEWER: How did you feel
when she said that? I was mad.

Because I don't like
to be overruled.

I'd been trying to act
within my authority,

and I'd been countermanded
by my boss.

Linda Ham knew that NASA's history
with the Department of Defense

in using spy satellites

was a little bit chequered.

There had been a previous mission

where the landing parachute door
came off on launch

so the orbiter was flying with
a parachute without its door.

NASA made a request to
get some kind of imagery.

However,
the photos didn't help much.

INTERVIEWER: OK, so,
even if you could get photographs

it doesn't mean
they'll necessarily show anything?

I think they were a little bit
embarrassed in the end about asking.

And NASA never wants to look stupid.

NASA wants to be the
agency with the answers.

If you'd have said,

"Linda, two different
people need this information,

"their departments are
both asking, are you aware?"

That may have changed
the course of events.

Could I have argued with her? Maybe.

But did I get the impression
that her mind was made up

and, you know,
that was the end of that?

That's kind of where I was.
Is it not worth it

when there's
seven people who could be in a...?

That's easy for you
to say in retrospect.

Then, I wasn't really
concerned about it.

I was going to be a good soldier.

So, I called Air Force Base and
said, "I know I made this request.

"Turns out we don't need it.

"Forget I asked about it."

I was told that we would
not be getting images.

I got angry and confused.

"What does this mean?"

So I emailed Paul Shack.

"Why? Did you do anything about it?"
No reply. No reply.

So, I called him and I got him.

He was shouting at me.

You can't call it an argument

because an argument
takes two people shouting

and just one was
shouting in this case.

I ask him, "Why are you ignoring?

"You didn't reply to my email. Why?
I was asking why you didn't respond.

"Now I have you."

Well, I got sarcastic.

I said, "Don't be a Chicken Little."

NARRATOR: Here is Chicken Little.

A little shy on brains,

but a good egg as chickens go.

I knew that story in
the American folklore.

Hurry, hurry!
The sky is falling!

I've seen the cartoon. He is
portrayed as easily frightened.

Just like I told you!
Hit me on the head!

And the lesson is,
Chicken Little is not to be trusted.

Chicken Little always gets excited.

Paul Shack treated me as if I were

the well-intentioned-but-silly
chicken.

I was very upset and angry

and disappointed with my engineering
organisations top to bottom.

There's a ticking clock.

We were losing time.

This is an email I drafted.

"In my humble technical opinion,

"this is the wrong, and bordering
on irresponsible, answer

"not to request additional imaging
help from any outside source.

"Remember the NASA safety posters
everywhere around stating,

"'If it's not safe, say-so'?

"Yes, it's that serious!"

I felt the need to draft that
email with that strong language,

and the strongest word in there
is accusatory, "irresponsible".

But I struggled on
sending it or not sending it.

I thought, "The astronauts trust us.

"They're in the mission,
we're protecting their lives.

"They want to believe that we're
doing the very best for them."

But I would be going against
all of my engineering management,

and I was afraid
about my future career.

I was married and we had a child,

had a home, had a mortgage.

And I did not send it in the end.

I remember, that Wednesday night
when I came home from work,

he showed me the email

that he had not sent.

He was very agitated...

..very frustrated,

because he wasn't sure what to do.

The thrust was, finish the analysis

even though you have no information

on which to base your analysis.

He said, "It's like being asked

"to analyse a car accident

"that has just happened outside,

"but you're not allowed
to look out the window."

The photo denial forced us
into a rock and a hard place.

We have to produce an analysis
anyway, without a photo.

Now we play volleyball.

And football.

Bicycle kick.

"You guys are doing a
fantastic job staying on timeline

"and accomplishing great science.

"There is one item that
I would like to make you aware of.

"This item is not
even worth mentioning,

"other than wanting to make sure

"that you are not surprised by it
in a question from a reporter.

"During ascent,
at approximately 80 seconds,

"some debris came loose

"and subsequently impacted
the orbiter left wing.

"Experts have reviewed
the high-speed photography

"and there is absolutely no concern
for entry. That is all for now.

"It is a pleasure working
with you every day."

INTERVIEWER: How reassuring
does that seem to be?

Oh, OK, so they saw something.

They're taking care of it.

This email was...

..too short, too sweet, too easy.

I really love seeing
a team to come together.

And the bigger team who makes
this entire mission possible...

..is the team on the ground

and all the folks who work in
Mission Control, all the folks who

work at the different NASA centres.

It's just such a great feeling

for me to see everybody working
together as a team like that.

LINDA HAM: OK, good morning
and welcome to the MMT.

Friday morning, Rodney's
team presented their analysis.

I wasn't presenting
the results of our analysis.

The protocol was that
a senior engineer would

present on our behalf.

We all knew that if the engineers
find out that this is bad,

there is nothing we can do.

If the heat shield was lost,
that was just the endgame.

RODNEY ROCHA: The presentation
showed five scenarios

that we were analysing
over the past few days.

Rodney's concern was uncertainty
in where the damage was.

The way they compensated for that

was to analyse multiple
possible locations.

Instead of analysing this area,

we're going to analyse THIS area.

"It would cause localised heating,

"but no burnthrough,"

I believe, were the
words that they used.

RODNEY ROCHA: When we
completed the analysis,

none of the scenarios
showed a fatal outcome.

I felt some relief. I thought we
were in good shape. I believed him.

I mean, you know, that's
what you want to hear.

You don't want to hear,
"We're going to lose the vehicle."

What's missing in
that is we should have

had, in bold face,
at the very beginning,

"These are engineering
assumption cases.

"We do not know, without extra data,

"whether these are actual
representations of reality."

A "turnaround issue" - what they
meant was "some level of repair".

INTERVIEWER:
So, when Columbia comes back?

When it comes back,
but nothing really bad, that bad.

Just local repair.

Patch it up and let's go again.

And that's what was being
communicated to Linda Ham?

That everything was OK?
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Even though you all sat there
and thought it wasn't OK? Yes.

What, you didn't...

You didn't...
She was in the room with you.

She was in the room with us.

So, what prevented you from
going to talk to her?

The chain-of-command protocol.

You don't approach
managers directly.

You're... You know,
you're a grown man,

and you're in the room
with only 12 people.

I'm a grown man with grown men
telling me not to do that.

There are other grown men

with power and authority saying,
"Don't do that."

What would have been
the repercussions

of talking to her in that room?

I don't know if...

I don't know.

My thoughts at the time of...

I feared the worst, but
I hoped for the best.

Most people,
I think the psychology is,

avoid even thinking about the worst.

You don't want to
face that fear that...

That issue that is the worst.

We've got an announcement
that we'd like to make.

It is today that we remember

and honour the crews of
Apollo 1 and Challenger.

They made the ultimate sacrifice,

giving their lives and service to
their country and for all mankind.

Their dedication and devotion
to the exploration of space

was an inspiration to each of us,

and still motivates people around
the world to achieve great things

in service to others.

As we orbit the Earth, we will
join the entire NASA family

for a moment of
silence in their memory.

Our thoughts and prayers go
to their families, as well.

One day, during the mission,

I worked Mission Control
and it was like 2am.

You know, the graveyard shift.

I was reviewing
the notes of the mission,

and then, here's this foam issue.

Me and my colleague
we were reading that,

and I remember saying,
"Well, that's unusual."

We actually had this discussion of,

"Hey, you can use a family
conference to talk to Laurel

"and find out what they knew."

And you got to remember
the hat you're wearing

is your flight surgeon hat,
not your family hat.

INTERVIEWER: What did
he mean by that in this case?

You found out this
information in the context

of not being a family member,

but being a NASA employee
on the mission.

It actually would have
broken protocol for me

to bring up an issue
to a crew member,

even though it's my wife,

without going through
the official channels.

And when you spoke to Laurel
in the video conference,

did it cross your mind to bring
it up then? No. You know why?

Because that conference
was for Iain and Laurel,

and I was a bystander.

I remember a certain
sense of relief.

Like, it's almost over.
She's almost back, kind of, yeah.

I knew she was going to come back.

I never had a question in my mind.

UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

LINDA HAM: Columbia, Houston.
Good morning,

and we're looking forward
to our last day on orbit with you.

Thanks, Mike, we've all enjoyed
the mission down here.

And I think that music woke
up the Control Center, too.

You know, it's been a long 16 days,

and so, we're all just super
excited to see our loved ones again

and just be back to normal,

whatever that looks like.

And the kids decorated
the house for his homecoming

and our neighbours put up flags.

REPORTER: Given the fact that you
may have lost a little bit of tile

during lift-off, I'm wondering
if there is going to be

anything different about the entry
profile, taking that into regard?

No, there isn't.

We, the engineers and analysts,

took a very thorough
look at the situation

with the tile on the left wing,

and we have no concerns whatsoever.

All of the analysis says
that we have plenty of margin

and that the impact
could not have been,

from this particular material,
significant enough...

..and therefore we haven't
changed anything

with respect
to our trajectory design.

So, nothing, nothing different.

It'll be nominal,
standard trajectory.

And as we said,
Columbia coming back,

it's been 16 days now since
she left the Kennedy Space Center.

This is the route.

I remember getting up that day

and we were staying
right next to Banana River.

We got up and there
were dolphin in the water

and looking at the dolphin,

thinking it looked
like a picture-perfect day.

I mean, it was so pretty
and everything was so pleasant.

We show page A1-15 complete.

MISSION CONTROL: And, Rick, we copy.

I just remember standing out
on the balcony with Laura

and watching the sunrise

and just saying to her,
"This is a day you'll never forget."

We're about 42 minutes away
from an engine firing

that would begin Columbia's descent.

The crew, in the final
stages of their preparations now,

are taking their seats.

At the commander seat, Rick Husband.

Pilot Willie McCool.

I was desperately waiting
for my mom to come back.

The thing I was most
excited about was just...

..holding her again
and talking to her.

They put bleachers
close to the runway

and you're driven down there
with your friends and family

that you have invited
for the landing.

They had speakers
and you could hear Rick talking.

MISSION CONTROL: Rick,
we're ready for the manoeuvre.

RODNEY ROCHA: I did not usually
come in for a landing.

To me, those were so routine.

Usually, the orbiter
has been working well,

they have a good weather call.

But I had this wing concern
because of the impact.

So I said, "I will go in."

I realised that most of
those people at those consoles,

they don't know anything that's
been going on for two weeks.

They've been looking at

the condition of this
system, this system,

but they don't know
any other history.

I was the Lead Entry Ground
Controller for the STS-107 mission.

My primary thing is getting
the spacecraft up onto orbit

and getting it back down safely.

That morning, the atmosphere was
upbeat, there's no issues.

We work with the crew to go through
check outs of the orbiter systems.

Rick, we're ready.

Here it comes.

Looks good.

We got all of our systems ready,

all the sensors ready and we

prepared for the
de-orbit preparation,

which is you convert
the space shuttle

from a spacecraft
to a re-entry vehicle.

Everything was proceeding
normally that day.

The big thing that I remember
really paying attention to

shortly before
landing was the weather.

MISSION CONTROL: Flight controllers
are currently monitoring the fog

that has limited visibility
but is dissipating.

Because obviously, it's just
critical to have decent visibility,

no big weather
issues when you're landing.

Flight Director LeRoy Cain
discussing weather conditions

at present with forecasters here.

LeRoy was the person in charge.

So, everybody on their consoles
are monitoring their own systems

and they're all reporting into
LeRoy what they're seeing.

MMACS and GNC, you're ready?

Flight-MMACS, we're ready.
GNC is go.

OK.

Columbia, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.

Hey, Rick, I guess
you've been wondering,

but you are go
for the de-orbit burn.

We are happy with the weather
at KSC, you are go for the burn.

De-orbit burn is a major
decision in the process.

Once that de-orbit burn is made,

you are committed to landing.

They're coming home.

One way or the other,
they're coming home.

Columbia, Houston.

Good burn, no trim required.

We copy and concur, Houston. Thanks.

Then we'll meet you in post-burn.

REPORTER: Columbia's
altitude now 71 statute miles

as it enters Earth's
atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.

Its speed, 17,000 mph.

THEY LAUGH

REPORTER: Columbia approaching
the coast of California now.

Wings level, nose angled
up 40 degrees to control heating.

Flight, MMACS

Go ahead, MMACS.

FYI, I've just lost four separate
temperature transducers

on the left side of the vehicle,
hydraulic return temperatures.

RODNEY ROCHA: As time goes on,
we start seeing anomalies.

Sensors are starting to fail.

I mean, you're telling me you lost
them all at exactly the same time?

No, not exactly.

They were within probably four
or five seconds of each other.

There was something that
we didn't understand going on.

And I remember asking
my team, you know,

"Just make double sure.

"Let's double-check
all of our data."

OK. Where is that
instrumentation located?

All four of them are located
in the aft part of the left wing.

Something has gone very wrong.

And it is the left wing.

That's the stomach punch
right there.

And, Columbia, Houston,
we see your tyre pressure messages

and we did not copy your last...

Roger...
STATIC CRACKLES

At some point,
we lost comm with the crew,

but that's actually common.

I mean, you don't
have communications

all the way through entry,

so that didn't initially
get my attention.

Columbia, Houston. Comm check.

MMACS: We've also lost
the nose gear down talkback

and the right main gear
down talkback.

RODNEY ROCHA:
Everybody started to lose sensors.

They were getting
no telemetry whatsoever.

The screens were just going blank,
reading nothing, just turning off.

Columbia, Houston. UHF, comm check.

There was a tenseness
coming into the room.

My focus was forward.

You know, trying to get something
to report to flight that was useful.

But there wasn't anything.

Columbia, Houston. UHF, comm check.

Oh, it was...it was painful.

He makes the call.
We hear nothing.

You look at the screen

and the tracking hadn't
moved from the Dallas area.

FDO, do you have any tracking?

No, sir.

So, at the console that I was at,

we had an off-duty flight director

who called our console and said,

"Hey, I'm watching the landing on TV

"and they're showing this
debris in the sky."

INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION

INAUDIBLE

ELLEN OCHOA, VOICEOVER: That's when
we realised it really was bad.

REPORTER: Y'all, we are awaiting
Space Shuttle Columbia,

as we promised.

About ready to land at the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It's supposed to happen
in about 15 more minutes.

At the runway, there was just
a lot of energy in the air,

and so, as a kid, you just
kind of ride that energy.

But all of the waiting
just felt like an eternity.

Here we go! Woo!

There's this big countdown clock.

I just remember staring
at that clock,

watching every second go down.
I'm like, "Is it now? Is it now?"

I don't know what I expected
when I saw that clock.

Like, for them to just magically
arrive when it reached zero?

Iain was very excited.

Mom's coming home and, you know,
he's going to get Mom hugs,

erm, great meals...

You know,
life will be back to normal.

It is now 9am on the East Coast.

Take a look outside. If you hear a
"boom-boom", it's the Space Shuttle.

Somebody from NASA said, "You'll
see the big, kind of, parachute

"that pops out of the back."

I think that's probably
what I was most excited about,

just watching
the parachute come out.

But then the clock started
counting back up.

It went zero, negative one,
negative two...

Where's the double sonic boom?

No sonic boom.

I'm kind of looking at
all the other families,

but no-one was really
saying anything.

You could kind of feel the air
shift a little bit.

There's no Space Shuttle.

I just got this incredible pit
in my stomach...

..of fear and of anxiety.

A rush of adrenaline
that you just...

You know something's wrong.
Something's wrong.

The shuttle is the most complicated
space machine ever built.

The world's greatest
electric flying machine.

It has been a bad day for NASA.

A sense of tragedy
in the space programme,

and as word spreads
across the nation...

There are no simple
and easy answers.

We are doing everything
we possibly can

to find out what caused
this accident.

All the warning signs were there.

This didn't have to happen.
We let it happen.

Houston, UHF comm check.

MILA's not reporting any RF
at this time.

When are you expecting
tracking?

One minute ago, Flight.

Flight, GC. No C-band yet.

Copy.

C-band is a radar
that sits on the ground

and literally it sends out
a signal and it bounces it

off of the spacecraft
to tell us where it is.

But we were getting nothing.

You know, the room was just silent.

All right, Miles, back over to you.

Erm, we've got a little problem
on the Space Shuttle Columbia.

It has been out of communication
now for the past 12 minutes.

Let's take a look at a live picture
of mission control in Houston.

I was live on morning TV.

I was dialled into NASA
on a cellphone I had.

There was a secret phone number
you could dial into

and hear the mission audio.

The people in the control room are
going, "Are you hearing this?"

No further communications with the
spacecraft about 8am Central Time...

Hang on, let's listen in.

..and no further tracking data from
the spacecraft that was gained from

C-band tracking radar at the Merritt
Island tracking station in Florida.

My team was in the control room and
they were like, "This is serious.

"We need to get Miles
off that couch."

And as I was making my way across
the newsroom to this other set,

I literally started heaving.

The last communications
with the Shuttle Columbia

during its descent from orbit
were at about 8am Central Time...

Standing on the side of the runway,

realising that my biggest fear
is coming true.

I just dropped my head
and turned around,

shaking my head, just walked away.

There wasn't anything else
you could do.

We are a minute-and-a-half past
the scheduled landing time.

The Space Shuttle is not here.
This has never happened before.

All of a sudden,
the astronaut family escorts,

all of their cellphones
start simultaneously ringing.

We realised something's
seriously wrong, and I said,

"Let's get the families... Let's
get them back to crew quarters."

Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh!

It looks like we've got a van,
probably full of family members

of the astronauts, being
driven away. That's not good.

I remember grabbing Mom's arm
and saying, "Mom, is Daddy OK?"

And I was just kind of staring
out of the window,

trying to figure out
what was happening.

I can just hear my mom and the
driver just kind of whispering

in a hushed tone, like,
"What does this mean?"

From WFAA TV, Channel 8,
The Spirit of Texas.

We're going to suspend
our normal format right now

because we've got
some breaking news.

This is videotape
of the Space Shuttle Columbia

on its way to a scheduled
landing this morning.

But then we began to see this...

It looks like you can see pieces
of the shuttle coming off.

There you can see numerous streams
leaving some kind of trail

over the skies of Texas.

The Space Shuttle over Nacogdoches?

What is... What is happening?

We had just gone through 9/11
and at first I thought,

"Did somebody blow it up?"

It was probably a reasonable thought
that a lot of people had,

that it could be something
terrorist-related,

even in this small rural area,

because you never know
where that might take place.

Phones were ringing off the hook.

Much more than our dispatch staff
could handle.

There was mass confusion.

We can only hope that what
we're seeing is not the worst,

but we don't have any confirmation.

Well, they were reporting
what they knew on TV,

but here we knew that it was
falling all over our county,

and so immediately
I picked up my camcorder.

This was something
that was going to be big.

Oh, my goodness.

I wonder what that is.

A large piece of debris right in
the middle of their parking lot,

behind the bank.

You see this? This is parts of it.

That's where it hit.
That's where it hit and bounced.

Well, it's up in a tree over here.

It must have come right
through there. Golly!

That's pretty big.

It was just chaos.

Y'all didn't touch it or anything,
did you? No, mam.

You don't understand.

You don't comprehend the massiveness
of what's happening.

It became pretty obvious that...

..the worst had happened.

It was just shocking.

People waking up
to this horrible news.

Quite frankly, I turned and looked
across a big open ploughed field,

and there, in fact,
is a piece of smoking wreckage.

This blackened material,
letting out white-hot smoke.

There's some rubber
burning in our pasture.

They're reporting a piece
of wreckage came through

an apartment roof
and started a fire.

Catastrophe striking
the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Its crew of seven astronauts...

Right now, NASA will be
trying to make sense

of what happened in the skies
over Texas.

GC, Flight. Flight, GC.

Lock the doors. Copy.

I was starting to see the beginning
of the process for shut down,

preserve your data,

because it's going to be needed
later, for investigation.

No... No phone calls off-site
outside of this room,

our discussions are on these loops,
on the recorded DVIS loops only.

No data, no phone calls, no
transmissions anywhere, into or out.

I remember turning around
and seeing LeRoy...

..and he had...he had a tear
going down his cheek.

That was...that was a hard moment.

I glanced up and I saw an engineer,

I remember her eyes
and cheeks were wet.

She was sobbing and crying.
And she looked at me and she said,

"There's nothing
we could have done."

And all my pent-up frustration
and anger just came out

and I said, "I've been hearing
that damn stuff all week

"and I'm sick and tired of it!"

I think I was more angry than sad,
thinking,

this didn't have to happen.

It didn't have to happen.

We were told, "We're going to
take you to crew quarters",

and so we were just kind of taken
to this huge boardroom.

It's this big long table, many
chairs, and all of these TV screens.

And all of the screens were off.
Everything was off.

We were all together,
waiting in this room,

but as a kid, I was just looking
around to see if I could,

kind of, figure out
what was going down.

I remember going
in the conference room...

..and, erm...

..it was my job to
tell the families.

I can't remember exactly
how I said it.

That, erm...

That the crew is lost -
that they were not coming home.

I didn't want them to have
any kind of false hope, and...

..I just did it in the most...

..caring, compassionate way
that I could.

It's almost like,
from what I remember,

there was, like, a ringing in my
ear.

Like, I don't know what was
being said or what, like...

And, you know, I just...
You can't even process that.

This is not happening.

There's no way this is happening.

In my mind, I'm thinking,
kind of, like,

the spaceship is like a cruise ship.
There are lifeboats.

Surely they got on a lifeboat,
you know?

And, you know, somebody has just
got to go get them, cos...

I'm thinking of like, you know,
all of the science fiction movies

where they get into the little pods
and they zoom away from the danger.

Somehow they had survived
the crash in the ocean somewhere,

and they were all out
living on an island.

There was explosive crying.

If you've ever heard an animal
scream in agony or...

It was... It was primal.

It was... It was horrific.

Everything just fell apart.

The shuttle wasn't coming home.
Dad wasn't coming home.

Sorry.

These were husbands and fathers
and wives, gone.

A fair amount of rookies
on this particular one.

Somehow I just got my act together
and I just started talking.

The mission appeared to go well.

There was one thing that engineers
were looking at at launch.

We're going to try to get you
some tape of it.

There was a piece of debris
which came off the shuttle.

I'm going to bring in a model here.

I felt like it was my responsibility
to talk about the foam strike,

to get it out there in the public,
so...

..I talked to the folks in the
control room and I said, you know,

"Can you cue-up the launch replays?"

All right, let's take a look at this
launch. If we can run that through

the telestrator,
that would be very helpful.

Look what happened
a minute after launch.

Look at this very, very slow...
Look at that piece, right there.

What was that?

There was a piece of debris which
struck the shuttle as it came off.

Was it a piece of foam?
Was it a piece of ice?

The question was, what did it do?

I still didn't know for sure.
I still was the armchair analyst.

But Challenger was deep
in our memory

and this was a similar scenario.

In the wake of Challenger,

NASA management just tried to
shut everything down,

and it created a huge amount of
bad blood between the media...

It made NASA look guilty as hell.

How will they respond to this?

What is this going to do
to the space programme?

The second shuttle craft lost.

It was my worst nightmare.

Painful.

Such a searing memory of Challenger
and how much it had defined NASA.

This was the very last thing I had
thought that I would be reporting

to the President on this day
or any other day.

I called the White House,
told him that we don't know a lot

but we have just lost Shuttle
Columbia. This was my duty...

..to be responsible
for this accident.

My fellow Americans...

..this day has brought terrible news
and great sadness to our country.

The Columbia is lost.

There are no survivors.

All Americans today
are thinking as well

of the families of these
men and women

who have been given
this sudden shock and grief.

They gave their lives for us
and we want everybody to know

how much we appreciate that,
especially their families,

because it's the most precious gift
they could give.

When we drove up in front
of our house...

..our whole street,
all of our neighbours,

were standing outside of
our house to welcome us.

Just hugged and cried in the street.

We walk into the house that
my brother and I had decorated

to welcome my dad home,
and now we have to take this down.

Like, this is.... He's not here.

We were home...

..but it wasn't the same.

The solution for the first day
was...

..drink alcohol and talk.

I mean, drinking - a lot.

Until I'm just passed out.

Going home, you go through it
all over again.

You realise...

..she's not going to come back.

So it was kind of hopeless.

Nothing really matters any more.

I mean, honestly,
the only goal I had...

..was simply just to keep him alive.
I mean, literally.

It's like, I don't want him to get
to that despondent stage where

he just says, you know, "I'm going
to check out and join Mom now."

This happened under my watch.

But I didn't have the answers.

In every public forum
I'm going to have to be in,

how am I going to explain this
to anybody?

We're going to find out, we hope,
in a few minutes, what NASA knows.

NASA, as an agency, will have a
lot of tough, pointed questions,

asking specifics.

At this time we have no indication
that the mishap was caused

by anything or anyone on the ground.

Welcome to the Johnson Space Center.

To my left is Ron Dittemore.

He's the Space Shuttle
Programme Manager.

We're devastated...

..because of the events
that unfolded this morning.

Do you have any idea how much of a
damage area may have been left on

the left wing and how big that
piece of foam was that came off?

Tell me who's leading
this investigation.

We'd heard some reports
that during launch

there had been some concerns
that some debris hit the wing.

Is that true and is that
any cause of concern that

that could have caused
today's problems?

It is true. It was judged
that that event

did not represent a safety concern.

We have appointed
a Mishap Investigation Board,

an external group, people who are
independent from NASA, to ascertain

the causes and the circumstances
under which the tragedy occurred.

My thoughts are on what we missed...

..what I missed...

..to allow this to happen,

but I guarantee you
we're going to fix it.

I was playing tennis
in McLean, Virginia.

I received a phone call...

..saying that I would be
flown immediately

to Barksdale Air Force Base.

After Challenger,
NASA had a contingency plan

in case there was
a shuttle accident.

I never really imagined
that it would happen.

With Columbia, we had people
who had experience

with accident investigation

from the military, Navy
and Air Force, on the team.

I came to the investigation

as a helicopter pilot
who knew something

about doing accident investigations.

I did not come to the investigation
as a Space Shuttle expert.

I literally knew nothing about
how the shuttle was put together.

We needed NASA's help
because, by definition,

everybody who came in as an external
part of the investigation team

is not a Space Shuttle expert.

There was years
of shuttle programme knowledge

that we needed to learn
very quickly.

From what we understand,
a piece of foam insulation

came off during lift-off.

This piece hit part of
the left side of the shuttle

and they don't know
if there was any damage or not.

Very early on, NASA told us that

they knew about a foam...a debris
event.

But we didn't even know
enough about the shuttle

to understand that there
was foam on the tanks.

The press wants to know what
happened, and it's like...

..yep, so do we.

REPORTER: The recovery effort
is massive,

involving dozens of agencies,

covering many hundreds
of square miles.

It's the largest recovery effort
that has ever been attempted

in this country.

As an investigator,
I wanted as ironclad a case

as we could possibly have
for the sequence of events

leading to the cause of the crash
of Space Shuttle Columbia.

But if we were going to do that,

we needed to collect all the debris
and reconstruct the shuttle.

1,200 sites have been identified.

All those pieces will be brought
to the Kennedy Space Center,

where Columbia will be reassembled,
in a manner-of-speaking.

Literally thousands of pieces of
debris are now pieces to a puzzle.

They've already made hundreds
of finds,

from tiny scraps of metal
to whole panels...

..and the tragic but inevitable
discovery of human remains.

A spacecraft breaking up
at 190,000 feet.

It's something you couldn't,
like, get out of your mind.

I mean, I'd been in space before.

This was something
I was about to do again.

And then this horrific thing
happens to my classmates,

my co-workers, friends.

So I called the constable and I
said, "Hey, I need a helicopter.

"I've got to get to East Texas."

On the way, you could see there
were pieces of Space Shuttle,

thousands and thousands of pieces,
all over the place.

So, we land on the high school...

..it was a high school
football field, and, erm...

..a police officer said to me,
he says,

"Hey, we have a report of one
of the crew members' bodies."

I was the first person there
from NASA.

This was not something
I was trained for.

We just try to do the best job
we can to handle this

as respectfully as possible.

For decades, the American space
programme has been a source

of great technological innovation.

But that hard-won reputation
is looking badly knocked.

For many of the thousands who work
at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center

in Houston, today was the first day
back at work since the disaster.

They'd apparently been encouraged
not to talk to the press.

The investigators rented a building
right outside the gate.

I felt OK.
I felt, "This is a good thing,

"this has to happen,
I hope they're thorough."

Inside, the internal conflict
was building.

Getting angry at management,
and it was very public arguments.

It wasn't just one-on-one.
It was out in the hallways.

It was so accusatory.

There was so much anger
and frustration.

On the first day that we went
into Johnson Space Center,

there were people who
received us very well.

There were people who were
not happy that we were here.

I was one of the first people
to be...

..interviewed and interrogated.

They had access to everything -
all videos, all data, all emails.

People had to comply.

In some cases, we're asking for
data, and they'd be like,

"I can't give you that
information right now.

"You're going to have to
go up through

"a very formal NASA chain
of command to be approved."

Generally speaking, who were
the ones who were less keen

for your help, or less pleased
you were there, perhaps?

I think the folks that were probably
less interested in our help

were more at the management level
in NASA.

I call it the Managers' Club.

It's a type of a culture

where there are rules of behaviour
and ways of talking.

You don't jump the chain of command.

And that's insulting, to go up to
someone higher and ask directly.

You're supposed to co-ordinate all
your questions, especially harsh

or strong questions to managers.
You don't do that directly.

You use the intermediaries
to do that.

You don't talk bluntly
or pose questions like that

to a NASA manager.

Are you going to risk your career
in NASA by standing up

and arguing with
the chain of command?

Because that can be
very career limiting

and you find yourself shuffled off
into a windowless room

and, you know,
just going through paperwork.

I want the system, I want the NASA
manager culture, confronted.

Good afternoon, everybody,

and welcome to the Johnson Space
Center for today's briefing.

Again joining me is Shuttle
Programme Manager Ron Dittemore.

Today, I brought with me...

..a piece of foam, and I think we've
made some foam available to you,

so that you can get an understanding
of the composition of this material.

It's very lightweight,
which is logical.

You would want it to be lightweight
because the more weight you put

on the tank, the less up-mass
you could launch into an orbit.

So it's difficult for us to believe
as engineers, as management,

and as a team, that this particular
piece of foam debris

shedding from the tank represented
a safety-of-flight issue.

I caught some segment
that Ron got into

in which he said in
a declarative voice...

Right now, it just does not make
sense to us that a piece of debris

would be the root cause...

..for the loss of Columbia
and its crew.

There's got to be another reason.

How can he say that?
Where is he getting that from?

What a big denial.

To be certain it was foam
is nonsense, right?

But to be certain it wasn't foam
is equally nonsense, right?

And that's what they were saying.

It's not foam. Well, how do you
know?

I know from the accident
investigation team's perspective,

no-one was going to go public and
say, "We know what didn't happen."

Can you get that shot right there?

That's a NASA official.
He's holding a piece of foam,

which he is now saying could not
have had enough impact because

it's too light to have damaged those
tiles that we've been talking about.

I knew Ron, I had respect for Ron,
Ron was Linda Ham's boss,

and a good manager,

but what's always the first step
in...in grief?

Denial.

I called Ron and we had
a very brief conversation.

I said, "Ron, let me just
remind you, OK?

"We've got a clear understanding
that we are not going to

"eliminate ANYTHING until
the data has come in

"to definitively eliminate it."

To bring that out and dismiss it,
you know, pre-emptively,

I think speaks volumes.

At the very least
they had to acknowledge it,

but it was acknowledging
their own mistakes.

And that's hard to do.

Each week, there was a new
trailer-load of debris showed up,

came right in this hangar,
through those doors,

and it would be catalogued
and then put out on the floor.

I want to know what the debris
is telling us,

I want to know what the
aerodynamics are telling us,

and I want to know what
the sensors are telling us.

You know, follow the debris.
What's it telling you?

And if you follow the logic,

you begin to see pieces
that are telling you a story.

As we were progressing through
the left-wing reconstruction,

you can see these burned tiles.

This reinforced carbon-carbon
looks like it's been burned

in a way that's very different
than everything else.

All of that data pointed to
a problem at RCC Panel #8.

Something very different happened
in this location on the orbiter

and so let's go see if we
can understand what that was.

OK, so as the vehicle is
entering the atmosphere,

these black tiles are protecting
the structure,

the aluminium of the vehicle,
in high-heat areas,

and the grey is the wing leading
edge reinforced carbon-carbon -

RCC panels.

Those protect the vehicle
from the highest level of heat,

those 3,000-degree temperatures,
so that you don't get metal melting.

But we had never had any experience
in breaking a panel.

What was starting to join up was,
you've got video analysis

that says the strike on the orbiter
created a hole in the wing.

And you can see that there had
been some sort of penetration

against the RCC panel.

Hot gas had entered

and the shuttle had lost
aerodynamic control and crashed.

But I think the challenge
for a lot of folks at NASA

was believing that foam
had done that.

They would say foam can't break
reinforced carbon-carbon.

There were a lot of people that said

there's something else
that explains this.

There are dramatic new details
tonight from NASA

on what scientists knew and when
they knew it about possible trouble

that could put the Columbia
Shuttle astronauts' lives in danger.

The Observer moves the story
forward, saying that there have been

repeated warnings about safety at
NASA over the past couple of years.

We decided to ask NASA about
the history of foam strikes,

which had never been done.

I was asked by the accident
investigation team

to help find that type
of information.

I went through a database...

..and I was shocked to find
that there were over

a half a dozen occurrences.

We turned that in
to the investigation board

and I said, "You're not going to
believe this. Take a look at this."

1983 was the first bipod ramp
foam loss.

1990.

1992.

'92 again.

1994.

As well as those bigger pieces,
we saw small pieces of foam

fall away all the time -
what we call "popcorning".

Think of popcorn. When popcorn pops,
it pops up and comes out,

and so that's what we called it -
"popcorning".

They weren't very big,
so you're not talking about

much damage to the tiles,

and so it had become
the norm at NASA.

This mantra, "It's only foam,
it's only foam."

"Hey, we see foam loss all the time
and it never did any damage

"to the vehicle and we don't have
to worry about it. It's only foam".

Two missions before Columbia,
it happened on STS-112 Atlantis.

A significant strike hit the skirt
of the solid rocket booster

and actually put a dent in it.

Prior to the launch of Columbia,

in a couple of the meetings,
the topic of foam

coming off 112 came up.

There's probably, erm...

..15 to 20 people around the table,

and then there's a lot of other
people at NASA in the room.

We talked about starting to
look into this a little bit more

because we've seen it come off on,
you know, more than one flight now.

It could certainly be an issue
and we should understand

if there's a way to prevent it.

Late October of 2002,
after STS-112 Atlantis,

I went to a meeting
about that flight.

I had put together a report

about the foam loss and the damage
to the solid rocket booster,

and I presented the case
that said...

..that amount of foam, that mass,

in one chunk,
coming off Shuttle Atlantis...

..this was the vehicle telling us
something is wrong,

here's your warning.

At risk of being insubordinate,
I said to the heads

of the Shuttle Programme
sitting around the centre table,

I was adamant at that meeting,
either fix the problem

or don't fly an external tank on the
next launch, which is impossible.

From that meeting, I never
heard any discussion of...

.."Let's wait and see if we can
solve some of this.

"Let's get a better understanding
of this before

"we schedule the next launch."
None of that I ever heard.

In other words, again,
they were thinking it was more

of a turnaround issue,
and so it wasn't preventing

shuttle flights from going forward.

The pressure on the management team
to stay on schedule

and the concept of "it's just foam"

is leading the charge
through all of this.

So it wasn't like they weren't
talking about issues at all,

but there certainly was
a big focus on the schedule.

Here's an email.
It's Tuesday, January 21st.

This was sent six days
into the Columbia mission.

This is a private exchange between
Linda Ham and Ron Dittemore,

two of the top managers
in the programme.

"The external tank rationale
for flight for the STS-112

"loss of foam was lousy.

"The rationale states
we haven't changed anything,

"we haven't experienced any safety
flight damage in 112 flights."

The concluding sentence, "Rationale
was lousy then and still is."

What I take that to mean is that
Linda Ham is raising a concern

but they appear to rely on the fact
that previous flights

which had suffered this foam loss
had returned safely.

In other words,
"We've gotten away with this."

This is a failure to learn
from past similar events,

simply because those flights did
not have catastrophic consequences.

The classic... The classic
normalisation of deviance.

You have to make sure
that every incident

is thoroughly investigated
and properly assessed.

And that wasn't done
for the 112 foam loss.

People were saying they were
willing to accept the risk.

What they didn't understand is
how much risk they were accepting.

After the 112 loss,
people were starting to say,

"Maybe we're accepting
too much risk."

Yeah, I was concerned, you know...

As I said, the, erm...

The sense that the risk was greater
than we should be expecting,

was starting to surface.

We were moving
in the right direction,

we just didn't get there in time.

We should have never launched
Columbia

until we fixed that problem.

Lisa Stark with ABC News.

When you realised that you had this
debris that had struck the shuttle

and you started your analysis,
what was the discussion about

trying to take a look either through
satellites or these large telescopes

that the military has? And why was
the decision made not to try that?

We certainly had that discussion.

We believed that taking a picture,
looking for tile damage,

it does not show us the depth of
tile that may have been shaved off.

We cannot make a determination
conclusively

whether that represents
a concern or not.

Linda, reading through the
transcripts, in hindsight,

were you sufficiently open
to the idea

that this was a really
serious problem?

You're asking in 20-20 hindsight
or what my thought was then?

Well, it sounds like you were
just kind of seeking reassurance

that everything was OK,
as opposed to digging in

and saying, "How do we know this?"

I didn't have a preconceived notion
on the damage or the possible

consequences and I needed to wait
for them to complete their work.

The best experts at our disposal
concluded

that it was a minor problem,
not a significant problem.

They had done the engineering
assessment and evaluated it.

They said the worst case on the RCC
would be coating damage,

which would not be
a flight safety issue.

And when you added all that up,
there was no need to take pictures

to document any evidence, because
we believed it to be superficial

and it to be a turnaround issue
and not a safety issue.

And so we didn't take any pictures.

Had we known that there was a
catastrophic situation on orbit,

we certainly would have done
everything we could... Absolutely

Did you know that other people
at NASA, other departments,

were also requesting images
during the mission?

I did not know at the time.
I did not know.

I...

I'm not aware of anybody else
during the mission saying that.

I only learned later
that there really were

people outside of our team that were
trying to do something about it.

I had no idea what was happening
because there was no communication.

I'm not in the loop,
I'm not in the know.

Nobody's talking to each other
and so nobody knows what's going on.

That's just kind of the way it was.

NASA is a series of fiefdoms.

Ten separate centres, each of them
have their own responsibilities.

But there isn't necessarily
a lot of exchange of knowledge

across those silos.

Frankly, the system is not designed
for good communication.

But that's not an excuse

because this foam problem
was not a new problem.

It was ignored right up until
an opportunity

to intervene presented itself,
and then that opportunity

to get a spy satellite
to take a look was dismissed.

This sort of stick to your guns
of...

..convincing yourself that it's OK.

That just made matters worse.

Why would you not
just get the pictures

that could show the damage
and then work the problem?

Erm...

I could only deal with the data
that was presented to me.

The whole situation was a case
of people doing...

..their jobs
as they understood them.

But I think everybody was operating
with good faith. There was no...

I wouldn't say malfeasance,
but negligence...

There may have been... I don't
even think there was negligence.

I just think that the actions
we took were inadequate

for the problem we were facing.

I think there was a mindset
and sort of a hope

that we've seen foam strikes before

and it's never caused
a safety flight issue,

so we're assuming
that's the case here.

But not a sure thing.

It seemed like by staying ignorant
of the degree of damage,

the mission management team
perhaps didn't want to know

about the worst-case scenario.

At this point, from our work
in the hangar,

I think we have enough information
to say

that we've found the physical cause
of the shuttle crash.

But there were still people at NASA
who didn't believe

that foam could break
reinforced carbon-carbon.

At that point, the only question
that was really left

to tie the whole chain of events
together was,

does foam break
reinforced carbon-carbon?

We're here at Southwest Research
Institute in San Antonio, Texas,

to conduct a test
designed to show whether foam

that fell off the external tank
of the Columbia Orbiter

could create a hole big enough
to destroy the vehicle.

How does NASA move forward
if we don't do the foam test?

We need to do this.

Everything came down to
whether or not the foam shot

was going to break an RCC panel.

But if our investigative analysis
is wrong,

then what?

Five, four, three, two, one.

Whoa!

OK, foam will break
reinforced carbon-carbon

I mean, there was no doubt at
that point, right? Case closed.

There's no denying it.

You know, there was foam falling
from day one.

They should have had
that test done day two.

This was a known failure.

But I think the failure
to imagine being wrong,

the failure to imagine
the consequences of failure

were catastrophic.

And I think it's this whole notion
of the failure to imagine failure.

NASA's trying to move forward
after Tuesday's blistering report,

blaming it for failing to prevent
the Shuttle Columbia tragedy.

NASA stands accused of complacency,
of a flawed safety culture,

of major management failures.

This stinging report, with its 29
recommendations, is not just about

technical failures,
but also about a human failure.

NASA had conflicting goals
of cost, schedule and safety.

It's our view that clearly
there is still evidence

of a silent safety programme
with echoes of Challenger.

They knew about the foam.

They could take pictures
and people chose not to.

Pure grief and sadness turned into
more of, like, anger and disgust.

NASA was something
that I was so proud of

because my dad loved it

and it felt almost like
they had betrayed him.

It kind of became this
inner struggle in me of...

..how can I hate this thing that,
like, my dad loved so much?

Why?

Why? Those are the questions
that you can't answer.

The only...the only reason...

..was because of the way they made
decisions within that culture.

If there was damage, could it
have been detected in space

and some rescue plan conceived?
We'll never know.

Astronauts learn of the foam hit.

They are sent this grainy video
and an email that dismisses

the foam hit as, quote,
"not even worth mentioning".

Knowing that concerns had been
downplayed to the crew,

I felt angry.

I mean, I just was extremely
disappointed.

I think that Rick would have
wanted to have known

that something was very wrong
with the vehicle.

One of the things that I thought
was such an indictment

was that the astronauts were
expected to successfully fly

this multimillion dollar mission
and were given that responsibility,

but they had no authority.

In terms of a hypothetical,
and I think other people

in senior levels that probably
felt the same way,

if we knew that the crew
wasn't going to survive,

why would we tell them?
Why wouldn't we let them

just carry out their mission
and feel like they were successful?

I regret that I didn't do more,
but given what we know now,

it's unlikely anything I could have
done would have made a difference.

I feel ashamed.

So, who's guilty? I'm not just going
to say the programme managers are.

We're all guilty.

If you don't speak up
for your own system

and you're the victims of this
environment, we're guilty, too.

Yes, there were individuals
who made very poor decisions.

You need to embrace
dissenting opinions,

and if somebody says, "Hey, let's
get better data to make a decision",

why is getting better data
a problem?

But, I mean, I was in mission
control, I was a NASA employee,

I knew about the foam strike.

When there's blame that's laid out,
I'm right up there saying, "I knew."

And... And I wish I could have
done something differently

but I...I can't undo that, and it...

You can just make it better
for those that follow.

I fought, but I share
some of the blame

that says maybe I could have
fought harder.

But the thing I can't get past is,

if we knew entry was going to
cause loss of the vehicle

and loss of the crew, there are
things we can do as human beings.

And that is, for the families, the
chance to be able to say goodbye.

That wasn't afforded to anyone.

And that's always haunted me.

Sorry.

During the mission,
I could have easily done a story

because I saw the foam come off.

While NASA is saying it's nothing,
some engineers believed

there might be some concern.
What if I had done that?

I was the one who could have, you
know, should have and could have

owned that story in a way
that potentially

even might have changed
the course of events.

I didn't stay on that story, in
order to go be the person explaining

all the clever ways we were
going to kill people in Iraq.

And maybe I was doing
what NASA was doing.

I was sweeping it all under the rug.

And so I'm part of the problem,
you know? I'm complicit.

If you could say anything to those
individuals, the managers,

the engineers, the top bosses at
NASA who made those decisions,

what would you say now?

Yeah, erm...

I never really thought about it,
but I guess I would want them

to know that I forgive them

and that my family forgives them.

And that I can't imagine
what they went through,

having to make those decisions.

Like, that breaks my heart
thinking about it.

Erm...

But just that I'm not angry
about it any more.

And it happened,
but I don't blame them.

I don't think that
they're bad people.

In the end, after I go down
that journey of what-if'ing

and if someone had done this,
if someone had not done that,

in the end, it all comes out
the same - that the crew perished,

that everyone died.

And so, for me,
I had to very, erm...

..purposely make a decision that
this was not going to be something

that was going to define me
for the rest of my life -

that I was going to be
on a mission to fix that

or on a mission to be angry about
that or make people pay for it.

I mean, none of that was a path
I wanted to go on at all.

And God has been very merciful
to help me with that,

just to be able
to keep moving forward.

You know, I just prayed and hoped
that NASA learned from this.

That the lessons that they learned
will carry on

to future space flights, so that
they won't forget that people

are on the end of
whatever they're doing,

that people's lives are stake.

Rick was an astronaut.

It was something that we always
called a calculated risk

but it was a risk that Rick
decided to take.

And I'm OK with that.

If she had listened to me, you know,
things would have been OK

and she wouldn't have been up there.

I had told her not to go.

I was angry that she chose
to take that risk...

..instead of staying with me.

Daddy, I'm here!

Hi.

Oh, my gosh.

It's crazy over here, right?

LAUREL LAUGHS

You need your sunglasses?

Try them on.

This is Laurel,
and she is my daughter.

She has a lot of my mom's spirit.

The same enthusiasm and positivity.

I imagine...

..it would be harder if...

..she wasn't such a great kid.

So I got pretty lucky there.

NASA has released video footage
taken inside the cockpit

of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

It was recorded in the final moments
before the shuttle broke up.

The last part of the tape
was burnt-up in the accident.