Mission specialist Chawla was born in India before she moved to the United States in 1982. The loss of the space shuttle was a wrenching tragedy for NASA, the nation, and the world. "It still breaks me up today," he said during a recent interview. In recounting that terrible morning, Heflin choked up. This happened 20 years ago, on February 1, 2003. First, the shuttle's crew cabin suffered a depressurization, followed by a violent rotation of the vehicle and hot gasses entering the spacecraft as it flew over Texas. They died at about 9 am local time due to a failure of the shuttle's thermal protection system, caused by a chunk of foam that had struck the spacecraft's wing two weeks earlier during launch. He was referring to the seven astronauts on board Columbia-Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William C. Shannon offered a simple answer, "We lost them." Howell.Īs Shannon passed through the viewing room, Heflin asked, "John, what's up?" Heflin knew where Shannon was headed: to the nearby suite of Johnson Space Center Director Jefferson D. Shannon exited Mission Control and moments later entered the viewing room. Soon, they saw the mission operations director, John Shannon, hastily get up from his position behind the flight director and grab a large notebook that contained the flight contingency procedures. Heflin and Epps quieted themselves and listened to the mission audio more closely. "I got the feeling that something was not right from the movements of the flight controllers," he said. As the shuttle's ground track began to cross over the United States, making its approach across the southern tier of states toward Florida, Heflin began to sense that all was not well. Through large glass windows, the two looked out over Mission Control. While the shuttle's seven astronauts made their final preparations to enter Earth's atmosphere, Heflin chatted amiably with the room's only other occupant, a mission operations chief named Ron Epps. When Heflin, chief of the flight director office at NASA, walked into Mission Control, he found the observation room nearly empty. Leaden skies and chilly air greeted Milt Heflin 20 years ago today when he pulled into the large parking lot outside Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.Īlthough space shuttle Columbia was due to return to Earth after a two-week mission, the center was quiet on a Saturday morning.
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