Memories: 20 Years Since the Columbia STS-107 Tragedy

Usually, I make no plans for Saturday mornings to allow myself the luxury of sleeping late without an alarm clock starting the day. On February 1, 2003, however, I had booked an early salon appointment. A radio was on low volume there, and as I was checking out, I heard something about NASA losing contact with the Space Shuttle, which was due to land within minutes.

That sounded ominous. I immediately called my best friend and college roommate who lived nearby and asked if I could drop by. “I think something has happened to the Space Shuttle. May I come over to check your TV and radio?” Ten minutes later we were following the breaking news together.

Reports were coming in that the shuttle Columbia had not reached the landing facility in Florida at the designated time, which could only mean catastrophe. Reports of sonic booms and stuff raining down from the sky were coming in from a large swath of east Texas from Dallas to Louisiana. Soon a photograph that looked like meteors streaking across the sky appeared. Columbia had evidently disintegrated during its return. Why?

For almost 30 years, I was a curator of human spaceflight at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, specializing in the Space Shuttle era. Before coming to the Museum in 1989, I had worked on NASA’s Shuttle-Spacelab missions in Huntsville and Houston. I knew enough about spaceflight to be aware of what I didn’t know, and on the day Columbia disappeared, I knew nothing about the reason.

I did know that the media would soon be contacting the Museum for comments and interviews, and I did not want to speculate about what had happened or why or what it might mean for the future of NASA and spaceflight. From my friend’s house, I called the chair of the Museum’s Department of Space History to ask him to handle any press inquiries that might be directed to me.

I can no longer remember exactly what I did that day other than follow the news and feel the shock of losing another shuttle and crew. I remembered too well the day Challenger and its crew perished in 1986, and it seemed impossible that another such a loss could happen after 16 subsequent years of safe flights. This time I felt keenly the loss of the orbiter Columbia, which I had hoped would end its service on display at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where the test vehicle Enterprise would soon go on display. Surely when the Space Shuttle program ended, we would have a chance to acquire the legendary orbiter first flown in space by John Young and Robert Crippen. I had a soft spot for Columbia as the first launch I witnessed and the first Spacelab mission I worked.

On Sunday (the next day), I ventured to the Museum, where in Space Hall a large model of the shuttle was on display. I needed to update the sign that I always placed there listing the crew, the launch and landing dates, and the nature of the current mission. Someone else on staff had already set up by the model a draped table holding a condolence book, and visitors had left the first flowers and notes there. Museum staff also placed a memorial wreath and crew portrait on easels. News crews began to use this setting for on-camera reports and visitor comments.

Over the next week, the table became an impromptu memorial site, as each day more flowers, small flags, mission patches, votive candles, teddy bears, cards, and other mementos appeared. Visitors left these tokens in tribute to the shuttle and crew as symbols of our exploring nation. The items suggested patriotism, pride, faith, and sorrow. Two especially spoke to me: an origami crane and a sheaf of yellow roses with small Texas and U.S. flags tucked in, all tied with a bandana. We inventoried and eventually accessioned some of these items into the national collection as artifacts of public mourning and commemoration. The condolence book was filled with almost 2,000 signatures by visitors from 50 countries, some in unfamiliar languages, as visitors from around the world participated in the ritual of mourning.

On the day of the memorial service held at the National Cathedral (February 6, 2003), we set up a large-screen television and folding chairs in Space Hall so staff and visitors could watch the broadcast. Vice President Dick Cheney eulogized the seven crew members of Columbia’s last mission: commander Rick Husband and pilot William McCool; mission specialists Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, and Laurel Clark; and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.

Later in 2003, as the space shuttle curator, I was invited to visit the Columbia reconstruction hangar at Kennedy Space Center, where the debris recovered from the fields and forests of Texas was laid out on a grid to aid investigators in determining the cause of the orbiter’s disintegration. It was a somber workplace, of course, but also the scene of intense forensic analysis. The contrast between pieces that fell from the sky almost intact—the nose landing gear for example—and the tiny, charred fragments of the damaged port wing leading edge—Columbia’s fatal wound—pieced back together was fascinating. More poignant was the aching reality of these material things that survived the hypersonic, high-altitude vehicle breakup and the infinitely more precious humans who were too fragile to survive.

Twenty years later, we still mourn these seven who died on the way home from an extraordinarily successful research mission. They did nothing to cause their demise; their fate was preventable. Their children are now grown but marked by the loss of a parent during their tender youth. Some spouses have remarried but still cherish the ones they lost. NASA observes a Day of Remembrance each January to honor all astronauts who have died on duty. A monument to the Columbia crew stands near the Challenger crew monument in Arlington National Cemetery. Schools and parks named for members of the crew are scattered around the country. The space shuttles were retired in 2011 after 30 years in service and 135 missions. Discovery, not Columbia, has pride of place in the Museum’s space hangar. Spaceflight continues.

Valerie Neal, Ph.D., Curator Emerita, Space History Department.