Two a long time after the Columbia catastrophe, is NASA’s security tradition fastened?

Leaden skies and chilly air greeted Milt Heflin 20 years in the past right this moment when he pulled into the big car parking zone outdoors Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Although area shuttle Columbia was as a result of return to Earth after a two-week mission, the middle was quiet on a Saturday morning. When Heflin, chief of the flight director workplace at NASA, walked into Mission Control, he discovered the statement room practically empty. While the shuttle’s seven astronauts made their closing preparations to enter Earth’s environment, Heflin chatted amiably with the room’s solely different occupant, a mission operations chief named Ron Epps.

Through massive glass home windows, the 2 appeared out over Mission Control. As the shuttle’s floor observe started to cross over the United States, making its method throughout the southern tier of states towards Florida, Heflin started to sense that every one was not effectively. “I acquired the sensation that one thing was not proper from the actions of the flight controllers,” he stated.

Heflin and Epps quieted themselves and listened to the mission audio extra intently. Soon, they noticed the mission operations director, John Shannon, rapidly rise up from his place behind the flight director and seize a big pocket book that contained the flight contingency procedures. Shannon exited Mission Control and moments later entered the viewing room. Heflin knew the place Shannon was headed: to the close by suite of Johnson Space Center Director Jefferson D. Howell.

As Shannon handed by means of the viewing room, Heflin requested, “John, what’s up?”

Shannon supplied a easy reply, “We misplaced them.”

He was referring to the seven astronauts on board Columbia—Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, and specialists Michael P. Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon. They died at about 9 am native time as a result of a failure of the shuttle’s thermal safety system, brought on by a piece of froth that had struck the spacecraft’s wing two weeks earlier throughout launch. First, the shuttle’s crew cabin suffered a depressurization, adopted by a violent rotation of the automobile and sizzling gasses coming into the spacecraft because it flew over Texas.

This occurred 20 years in the past, on February 1, 2003. In recounting that horrible morning, Heflin choked up. “It nonetheless breaks me up right this moment,” he stated throughout a latest interview.

Broken security tradition

The lack of the area shuttle was a wrenching tragedy for NASA, the nation, and the world. Mission specialist Chawla was born in India earlier than she moved to the United States in 1982. Payload Specialist Roman was the primary Israeli astronaut.

The shuttle could be grounded for greater than two years, and it was solely introduced again in August 2005 in order that NASA might use its capacious payload bay to finish the development of the International Space Station. In 2011, the winged automobile was retired for good.

For NASA, the ensuing evaluation from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board produced a damning indictment of the company’s security tradition.

“Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to security had been allowed to develop,” the report said. NASA engineers and decision-makers relied on previous successes with the shuttle as an alternative choice to sound engineering practices. Moreover, organizational obstacles stifled variations of opinion and made it troublesome for lower-level workers to deliver ahead security issues to administration.

Simply put, NASA had gotten complacent.

In Columbia‘s case, managers had noticed foam falling off the shuttle’s exterior tank throughout many earlier launches. It had not precipitated severe harm to the area shuttle earlier than, so why ought to it this time? And whereas there have been some issues about this specific foam incident—lower-level engineers at NASA on three events requested photographs of a doubtlessly broken shuttle in area from US Department of Defense satellites—they had been by no means acted upon by senior managers. Transcripts of conferences of Columbia‘s Mission Management Team, chaired by Linda Ham, revealed nearly no dialogue of the problem.

So the deadly harm to the orbiter’s left wing was not found till after it was far too late to save lots of seven astronauts on board Columbia. They grew to become the third main lack of crew within the area company’s historical past.