On January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center. At 81.7 seconds after launch, a piece of insulating foam broke off the External Tank and struck the leading edge of the left wing.
The launch cameras caught it. The next day the Intercenter Photo Working Group, which reviews launch film, had no picture sharp enough to judge the damage and had never seen so large a piece of debris strike so late in ascent. Its chair called Wayne Hale, a Shuttle Program manager at Kennedy, to ask about getting images of the wing in orbit. That was the first of three requests the Columbia Accident Investigation Board counted. A United Space Alliance manager called the head of Space Shuttle Systems Integration to ask what it would take. And after two hours of discussion, the engineers’ Debris Assessment Team asked its NASA co-chair to pursue imagery through his own division, the Engineering Directorate, instead of up the usual mission chain of command.
On the morning of Flight Day Seven, Wednesday, January 22, Hale called a Department of Defense representative at Kennedy and asked the military to start planning to photograph Columbia. Within an hour the question had reached US Strategic Command, where a planner began identifying assets that could do it. The board noted that the call was placed without authorization from Linda Ham, chair of the Mission Management Team, and to a representative who was not the designated liaison for such requests.
Ham set out to find who wanted the pictures. She called members of her team and asked whether there was a “requirement” for imagery. None of them had requested it or could identify one. She never asked the Debris Assessment Team, the board wrote, though they were the team analyzing the foam strike.
At 8:30 a.m., NASA’s Defense Department liaison called Strategic Command and cancelled. The request had been made and rescinded within 90 minutes. The reason given was that NASA had found its own resources. A follow-up e-mail from a NASA liaison thanked the military for its prompt response and asked that future requests be “confirmed through the proper channels.”
The co-chair wrote an e-mail he never sent. “Remember the NASA safety posters everywhere around stating, ‘If it’s not safe, say so’? Yes, it’s that serious.” Asked later why he didn’t send it, he said he did not want to jump the chain of command.
On February 1, Columbia broke apart during re-entry. All seven crew members died. The board found that if managers had understood the threat and determined before Flight Day Seven that there was potentially catastrophic damage, a rescue by the shuttle Atlantis would have been “conceivable”: “challenging but feasible,” and dependent on problem-free preparation and a flawless countdown.
In a later chapter comparing Columbia with Challenger, the board wrote: “Allegiance to hierarchy and procedure had replaced deference to NASA engineers’ technical expertise.”