(12 Feb 2003)
1. VISION: NASA TV slate of approximate time period of communication, with overlaid audio:
SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) Communication between various NASA Mission Control employees:
Just taking a few hits here. We're right up on top of the tail, not too bad.
No commonality between all these tyre pressure instrumentation and hydraulic returns instrumentations?
No, sir. We've also lost the nose gear, down talk back on the right gear, down talk back.
Nose gear and right main gear, down talk back?
Yes, sir.
And flight econ'?
Econ'.
I got four temperature sensors on bottom line data that are all scale low.
Columbia out of communication at present with mission control, as it continues its course towards Florida.
I didn't expect this type of a hit on comm'.
GC, how far away from UHF? That two min o'clock good?
Affirmative, flight.
Columbia-Houston comm' check. Columbia-Houston UHF comm' check.
(inaudible) in smaller persistent case than that. In other words, we shouldn't expect as big as a change uncomfortable with 1500 feet down
Flight controllers are standing by for Columbia to move within communication range at the Merrit Island tracking station in Florida, to regain communications with Columbia
Okay
Columbia Houston UHF comm' check.
In flight, GC
Go
(inaudible) is taking one of their antennas off into a search mode
Copy
Final flight
Go ahead flight
Did we get, have we gotten any tracking data?
We got a blip of tracking data. It was a bad data point, flight. We do not believe that was the orbiter. We are in a search pattern with our c-bans (phonetic) at this time. We do not have any valid data at this time.
Okay. Any other trackers that we can go to?
Let me start talking flight, navigator
Communications with Columbia were lost at about 8am central time (0400gmt), about 10 minutes ago
Flight GC, Lock the doors.
Copy.
STORYLINE
Conversations between the flight controllers, released on Tuesday, suggest engineers were waiting helplessly at mission control while the space shuttle Columbia came apart on the threshold of space.
Flight director Leroy Cain quickly shifted his attention from landing the craft at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to saving computer data that might help experts learn what destroyed shuttle.
Thirty minutes before the landing, Cain was concerned about which end of the Kennedy runway Columbia commander Rick Husband would use to guide the shuttle to landing, a relatively minor issue.
In fact, there was no hint of any problem until the final six or seven minutes of the flight when Jeff Kling, the maintenance, mechanical arm and crew systems officer, reported a sudden and unexplained loss of data from spacecraft sensors.
Cain quickly asked if there was anything common to the sensors and got bad news in reply.
Kling said there was no commonality, suggesting there was a general failure instead of a single system.
In short order, flight controllers begin reporting a litany of bad news.
There is evidence of small collisions on the tail and signals are cut off from the nose landing gear and from the right main landing gear.
Then more sensors are lost and the drag increases to the left.
Capsule communicator Charlie Hobaugh begins a series of radio calls to Columbia.
There is no response as the minutes tick down toward a planned landing at the Kennedy Space Centre.
The communication checks continue.
So does the silence.
A radar station near the Kennedy Centre then says it is putting its radar in a "search mode".
This meant nobody could leave Mission Control or even make phone calls.
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