When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (2008) s01e06 Episode Script
Home In Space
In 1969, a group of astronauts changed the world.
They rode the biggest rocket ever built to the moon.
It was the culmination of more than 10 years of space pioneering and the foundation for exploring worlds beyond our own.
This is the story of our greatest adventure.
NASA is in trouble.
The multibillion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope is out of focus.
Its power and guidance systems are failing, too.
The public, Congress -- I mean, across the board -- you know, pictures of "Hubble the techno-turkey," "Hubble, one of history's great disasters.
" I had neighbors come up to me and say, "You have our sympathy for having to work on such a national disaster.
" They're under enormous pressure to fix it.
If they can't, many fear the agency may not survive.
At NASA, if you are unable to meet mission objectives, then there's a good chance that future funding and support is gonna be very difficult to come by.
The future of the space agency is riding on one of the most daring missions ever attempted.
Let's go to work.
NASA assembles a highly experienced crew.
Their training is the most intense for any astronaut since the Apollo flights.
Story Musgrave leads the repair team.
My part was to understand the mechanics down here on Earth and translate them into work up there.
Musgrave's partner is EVA specialist Jeff Hoffman.
It was the most complex spacewalking mission that NASA had ever undertaken.
It will take five extended EVAs to correct the space telescope's vision.
We couldn't afford unexpected events in the Hubble mission.
It was just too important and too critical that it be done right.
It's hard to hold back good people.
And I can guarantee you, the folks that I had on this team -- I mean, there was no stopping them.
The expectation was huge.
The repair mission was very, very high-profile.
This is shuttle launch control at T-minus 3 hours and holding.
We're standing by for live video of the crew donning their flight suits in the crew quarters, which is located in the Operations and Checkout Building.
This is Kathy Thornton's third shuttle flight and Jeff's Hoffman's fourth.
Mission Specialist Jeff Hoffman.
His pilot, Ken Bowersox.
The head of NASA delivers a personal message to the crew.
The message we got, "Guys, NASA's future is on line, and you're responsible.
" What do you say after that? "Yes, sir.
" 10 9 And we have a go for main engine start.
5 4 3 2 1.
And we have lift-off.
Lift-off of the space shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
I was extremely excited to be able to go up and be one of the people who was gonna rescue Hubble from this disaster.
Go and throttle up.
Go with throttle up.
To rendezvous with Hubble, Endeavour will circle the Earth 16 times a day, raising its altitude on each orbit.
Hubble is 370 miles above the Earth.
It's the highest the space shuttle can fly -- double its normal altitude.
FIDO, Flight.
Your clock is counting down Traveling at 17,500 miles an hour, it takes Endeavour two days to catch up to the space telescope.
- About a minute.
- Okay.
The first view that we get of Hubble is just a point of light off in the distance.
And then, every orbit, it gets brighter and brighter.
I like to use binoculars up there, so I put the binoculars.
"Oh, wow! I can really pick up the solar panels.
" Now it's getting bigger and bigger.
"Wow! That is big!" the bottom of the telescope Hubble is more than 40 feet long and 14 feet wide, with a mass of 24,000 pounds.
We copy.
Mission Specialist Claude Nicollier extends the shuttle's robotic arm and plucks the massive telescope out of the sky.
Space telescope captured.
Houston, Endeavour has a firm handshake with Mr.
Hubble's telescope.
We copy that, Covey, and there are smiles galore down here.
It's quite a sight.
Great work up there, you guys.
It only gets harder from here.
The repair schedule demands an extended spacewalk every day for the next five days.
Hoffman and Musgrave suit up in the air lock before venturing out into the vacuum of space.
Getting ready for a spacewalk takes a lot of time.
Space is a very, very unforgiving environment.
It's unforgiving of mechanical failures.
It's unforgiving of human error.
I mean, if your space suit springs a leak, you can have a very bad day.
They close the inner air-lock hatch, and it's just Story and me on our own.
And we're ready to go to work.
You know, it's showtime.
Okay, it's daylight outside, so you might want to put your visors down.
Visors down.
You're walking out of the tunnel onto the playing field.
I think that's the best way I can put it.
You're on the playing field.
And as I looked around the team at Mission Control, there were some locked jaws.
There were some people kind of tense.
I mean, you could tell.
They had their game face on.
You are expected to do certain things.
You got requirements put on you.
You're not in the stands.
You're not a spectator.
You're doing it.
The first spacewalk targets Hubble's faulty guidance system.
The telescope has six gyroscopes.
Four need to be replaced.
So we have to open up these big doors.
And then Story would actually insert himself underneath the gyroscopes.
It was a fairly tight space.
Right now, the bottom of the telescope I could not get up under there and then move.
There was no room.
And Jeff took me by the boots, and he fed me up inside the telescope.
You have to be very careful of debris, contamination.
So there's a lot of constraints on what we're doing.
Come hell or high water, we had to go get this done.
I did not want to do that first spacewalk and leave anything undone.
And I was basically beating the drum.
You know, "Let's keep it up.
Let's keep going.
" Two hours later, the first repair is a success.
- Endeavour, Houston.
- Go ahead.
Not to get you spun up, but we have six good gyros on the telescope.
All that remained was to close the door.
We had done it I don't know how many times in the water.
Nobody had ever thought about having problems with the doors.
I could get either the bottom or the top latch closed, but not both.
The bottom is engaged I think we got the door closed.
If you can't get the doors closed, you've lost the thermal control and you might have leaks.
You basically run a risk of losing the telescope.
Well, you can't leave Hubble up there with open doors.
That would've been a disaster.
The very tense moment, and I think my mind kind of blanks it out.
- No, don't do it yet.
- Okay.
I'm gonna try to get on the bottom.
On each orbit of the Earth, Hoffman and Musgrave pass from daylight into darkness every 45 minutes.
Working in extremes of hot and cold, they wrestle with a few inexpensive latches that could ruin a multimillion-dollar rescue.
Finally, Story and I came up with the idea that if we took a ratcheting strap -- basically, to exert the pressure on his bottom part of the door -- He could do that with one hand and hold on and work the latch with the other hand.
But the ratcheting straps could do more harm than good.
Problem was, you can exert about 2,000 pounds of force with these things.
Enough to crush Hubble.
Team on the ground was conflicted on whether what Story was gonna do would be safe or not.
I think they had visions of Hubble collapsing like, you know, an aluminum beer can.
Mission Control can abandon the spacewalk or allow the astronauts to improvise on the world's most expensive telescope.
Cycle it back and forth and it tends to work the striker plate through.
I thought, "Well, here we go.
We're gonna start talking about this, and we're gonna get behind.
" So I made a decision to go ahead and say, "We're gonna do what Story wants to do.
" - You are a go to do that, Tom.
- Okay.
I'm putting the come-along on, Jeff up top, me on the bottom.
We held the doors in alignment.
And then I just moved the handle.
- All right.
- Whew.
Good job, guys.
Story, if you want to grab the PRD and get the PA.
Well, let's leave the PRD There's no letup for the crew.
Kathy Thornton prepares for the second EVA.
These were jam-packed spacewalks.
We had a lot we had to get done.
And they were choreographed very precisely.
Hubble's solar panels need to be upgraded.
Thornton has to retract and remove them, then install new ones.
Velcro strap on the left door.
But Hubble isn't cooperating.
One of them did not come all the way in.
We decided we would take it off and throw it away.
I was to hold on to it on the end of the arm until sunrise so after we let it go, we would see where it went and be sure we were separating from it.
Once again, they're improvising.
If the release goes wrong, the massive solar panel could smash into the telescope or the orbiter.
When the time came to jettison it - You ready? - Yeah, I'm ready.
Okay, they say you got to go for release.
all I did was just let go.
All right, no hands.
Claude pulled me back on the arm.
There it goes.
Bye-bye.
Pilot Ken Bowersox fires the shuttle's thrusters to make sure they're clear of the solar panel.
And when that happened, the plume from the orbiter hit the solar array.
The solar array started flapping.
It's moving.
It's moving and flapping now, huh? To me, it was like the wings of a gigantic prehistoric bird.
I was awestruck.
It was beautiful.
I had the best view in the world on that.
The old solar panel will continue to orbit for years, slowly dropping toward Earth until it burns up in the atmosphere.
Thornton installs the new solar panels, completing her EVA.
So far, the decision to perform back-to-back spacewalks is working.
As each spacewalk was completed, little grins began to show up in Mission Control, which was kind of cool.
But the next two EVAs are the most critical.
The team will install two huge devices to correct Hubble's vision.
The first is a new supercamera the size of a grand piano, called WFPC.
It can see to the end of the universe and is designed to adjust for Hubble's faulty opticals.
The process of installing WFPC is very, very delicate.
This is a very sensitive optical instrument.
You know, I'm holding on to it.
I bang the instrument, I could misalign the optics.
- It's beautiful.
- Okay.
Mission Control runs tests to confirm the camera is working.
We check all this stuff out as we repaired it.
We ran what we call "aliveness check".
They just told us, "You're just gonna have to wait for a few minutes.
" The first signs are good.
The electronics are responding.
On the next EVA, Kathy Thornton installs the most critical optical device, called COSTAR.
It redirects the light coming into Hubble to compensate for the flaw in its main mirror.
It just slid right in there, just as smooth as it could be.
And it was -- It was incredible.
It was like, "This can't be happening.
I must be dreaming this.
Nothing's going wrong.
This can't be Hubble.
" The astronauts complete the most complex repair mission in history.
People have been wondering for years whether we could actually do this mission.
What we had set out to do, we had accomplished.
And, boy, we It's an incredible feeling.
Hubble can now begin to gaze deep into the universe in perfect focus.
We'd done our part.
Now it's gonna be up to the astronomers and scientists to do their part.
I could say unequivocally that if it weren't for the human space program, Hubble would be a piece of orbiting space junk.
Really hard to imagine how different the space agency would probably be now if we hadn't been able to fix Hubble.
Hubble's rescue has saved NASA's reputation.
Now it has the confidence to embark on the most ambitious construction project ever attempted -- the International Space Station.
Hubble showed us that we can do a number of spacewalks during a mission.
We can do more than one at a time.
We can do them back-to-back.
We can do them with two different crews.
And Hubble was probably the start of giving us that extra confidence to go assemble the space station.
And so bring it on.
NASA is building the first city in space.
It lays the foundation for a base of operations on the moon and missions to Mars.
Old rivals in the space race pool their resources for a project too enormous for any one country alone.
The Russians had a long history of long-duration flight under their belt.
We did not.
And so we hoped to learn some of the things from the Russians.
U.
S.
astronauts must learn to fly their rockets and work with totally different space technology.
I'd look across the table at one of my classmates, who was, say, a fighter pilot in the Russian Air Force.
And we trained, just several years prior, to shoot each other down.
Now the level of cooperation is unprecedented.
Interlocking components are being built on different sides of the world.
Every measurement requires extraordinary precision.
It's very difficult to build pieces of hardware -- modules, capsules, space shuttles -- in different parts of the world and have them meet for the very first time on orbit.
In November 1998, a Russian rocket blasts off with the first section of the space station, weighing 21 tons.
One month later, the shuttle Endeavour carries up the first section built by NASA, called Unity.
There goes the needle, rolling.
Houston, Discovery, roll program.
250 miles above the Earth, Mission Specialist Nancy Currie uses the shuttle's robotic arm to bring the two sections together.
It's the first time they've ever been connected.
Houston, Endeavour, we have capture of Zarya.
But the space station has a long way to go.
It's just a 30-ton metal shell.
Pilot Scott Altman's crew carries up fixtures for the interior, to turn it into a home for astronauts.
First, they have to rendezvous and dock with the rapidly expanding space station.
It starts out a point of light in the distance.
And you think, "It's another star.
" It doesn't look any different than everything else out there.
But as you get closer and closer, you start to be able to break out detail.
And you realize it's a place.
The space station is already the size of a 10-story building.
Docking the shuttle is too precise a maneuver for its automatic pilot.
It takes an astronaut's skill.
Everything is going so slow, it seems like, for a while.
But the gains go up, and it feels like the speed goes up.
Your heart rate goes up as you're coming in close, and critical firings until you get that final contact.
And the two vehicles kind of brush into each other.
And you see one of your crewmates call, "Contact".
Houston, we have a capture light.
Altman and his crew outfit the space station's interior.
We were like the finish carpenters for a house, where you go up and you do all the final work to make it ready for human habitation.
We ran electrical lines.
We turned on the lights.
I installed the toilet.
Very glamorous things like that.
When complete, there will be 15 pressurized modules for living and working and an observation area with seven large windows.
On the shuttle's next mission, Mike Lopez-Alegria test-drives a jetpack that will enable residents to work safely outside the station.
You open the hatch, and the planet Earth going by your feet at 5 miles a second.
In the middle of a spacewalk, flying around at 17,500 miles an hour, or 20,000 kilometers an hour, and let go of the spacecraft and just fly along with it.
It's beautiful.
With no sensation of speed in the vacuum of space, Mike L-A drifts away from the shuttle 250 miles above the Florida Keys.
I think the first instinct is amazing, massive, yet fragile thing that you're flying around, that's where you just came from.
That's where everything that you know about and have ever experienced all lives, and you're not there anymore.
The jetpack is a success.
It shows how far the art of spacewalking has come since Ed White and Gene Cernan first left their Gemini capsules.
Today I watch these kids flying the EVAs.
And they get out there, that's part of their repertoire.
They'll do it five, six, seven hours at a time.
I was just glad to get 20 minutes.
Just two weeks after Mike L-A's extraordinary spacewalk, astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts prepare for the next mission.
They will be the first crew to live long-term on the space station.
The Soyuz spacecraft has none of the comforts of the shuttle.
Unlike the shuttle, it can only fly once.
Every day in orbit, they fly the distance of a trip to the moon.
The International Space Station is starting to take shape inside and out.
Projected to cost $ 157 billion, it's the most expensive object ever built by man.
A new crew takes up residence every three to four months.
Each brings more building blocks and more supplies.
There's stuff everywhere.
There are experiments and laptops and tethers and electrical cords and Velcro patches.
A wonderful place to live and work.
Throughout 2002, the pace of construction speeds up.
Commander Ken Bowersox and his crew will install a central truss.
It's the foundation for all future expansion of the space station.
Now it's real.
It's not just training anymore.
This is a real mission.
It's a real flight.
7 6 Go for main engines.
That's the preliminary signal that something really great is about to happen.
But the best one is when the solid rocket boosters light.
You feel this kick in your back that the vehicle has jumped off the pad.
And lift-off of space shuttle Endeavour.
Another building block for the foundation of the International Space Station.
And off you go into space.
Welcome to station.
Yeah.
Bolshoi spasiba.
Great job.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Very nice docking.
Beautiful.
Good to see you.
Come in.
All right.
Let's go in! Bowersox and his crew load in their gear and supplies.
The current crew will head home on the same shuttle.
This is a very important day in the life of station and in the lives of all the crew members here.
The Expedition Five crew has done tremendous work.
I only hope that my crew -- Don, Nikolai, and I -- will be able to work as well over the next four or however many months we end up living on station.
Hopefully, more than four.
When Endeavour leaves, the Bowersox crew is alone in space until the next shuttle arrives to take them home.
Houston, physical separation.
Endeavour departing.
We wish you a safe landing.
Endeavour, Houston, you are on glide slope, on center line.
Main gear touchdown.
We're rolling out on Runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center, wrapping up a 5.
7 million-mile mission, bringing home the Expedition Five crew after more than a half year in space.
With Ken Bowersox on the space station, 2003 is scheduled to be the shuttle's busiest year yet.
But first, Columbia flies a special science mission.
Unlike the majority of space-shuttle missions now, which are space-station assembly where they're doing essentially heavy construction, Columbia STS-107 mission was a dedicated science mission.
Laurel Clark.
Mission specialist on her first flight.
I'd seen other shuttle launches, but it was a personal launch, 'cause my wife was on it.
And there's some TV monitors.
A few days before launch, Laurel Clark makes a home movie for their son, Ian.
Say hi.
Hi, Ian Blair.
I love you.
I'll see you soon.
It won't be that long.
You can actually see "Columbia" on the side of the vehicle.
Laurel's role in this mission was mission specialist, and their job is basically to run the experiments.
Streaming past the commander and the pilot.
Hi, Ian! So, whoever else is watching this, this is the external tank back here.
Main engines are way down.
You can't see them, but that's where the lines go into.
Oh, my gosh.
Columbia's commander is Rick Husband.
The commander's role is to be the leader of the crew.
But it's also one that facilitates the cohesion of the group.
And our astronauts coming out now.
I talked to him on the phone the morning of the mission, and he was very excited.
The weather was absolutely beautiful and perfect.
Commander Rick Husband and Mission Specialist Laurel Clark.
And you can see Husband climbing in.
Somewhat difficult.
Cramped quarters there.
David Brown and Laurel Clark as they await their turn to get on the vehicle.
Welcome aboard, Rick.
Thank you very much.
Good morning, Jim.
10 9 8 7 We have a go for main engine start.
5 4 3 2 1.
We have booster ignition and lift-off of space shuttle Columbia with a multitude of national and international space-research experiments.
Houston now controlling the flight of Columbia.
The international research mission finally under way.
Roger.
Roll, Columbia.
I was not nearly as anxious watching Rick launch into space the second time because it was an experience I had already had.
But I was very keenly aware of the exact moment when Challenger broke apart.
Columbia, Houston, you're go at throttle up.
You know, that time frame is forever embedded in people's memories.
The "throttle up" call acknowledged by Commander Rick Husband.
And even now, there's a sense of relief when you get past that point.
But people need to understand that space flight is risky business.
That's firm.
Got that.
Off staging.
I was very excited for Rick and also knew that he would orbit the earth at least once before we would get back to our hotel.
We're gonna do 1.
50, the orbiter up.
Dave Brown there on the right.
The entire cargo bay is filled with one large work area, outfitted as a laboratory in space.
STS-107 will conduct over 30 basic experiments only possible in space.
Their mission was a science mission.
They had the earth science and the physical science, and they had life sciences -- growing cells and testing various things on them.
My wife's involvement was with cancer-cell growth.
Insert the cartridge that she has filled Each of the crew that had one of these experiments to be responsible for -- They were always very excited about that.
I'm in a unique position because I work both as a flight surgeon and as a spouse.
One week before the landing, I worked a shift on Saturday morning.
And I remember going through the logbooks and seeing all those concerns about a foam strike.
It's standard procedure to film every shuttle launch with high-speed cameras.
Two cameras picked up images that looked very suspicious.
There was an object that came off.
The vehicle struck it, and there was a plume that was generated.
Some people said, "Oh, it's probably just foam.
And how bad is foam?" You know, it wouldn't be that much of a concern.
Much like you hit a Styrofoam block on the highway.
The crew is told the foam strike is not a cause for concern.
Life goes on aboard Columbia.
Orbiting 100 miles above them, Ken Bowersox is entering his 14th week living on the lnternational Space Station.
We'd already been there a couple months.
The atmosphere got very quiet aboard the station, because you could tell that the ground was focusing on Columbia and not really thinking as much about the space station.
We knew that as soon as Columbia was finished, the spotlight was gonna swing back to space station and things were gonna get very busy as we prepared for the next few weeks for the upcoming shuttle flight that was supposed to bring us home.
Hey, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter.
Z ero-G baseball.
Good morning, Ken.
Good morning, Laurel.
We did have one chance to make radio contact with the Columbia crew, and that was really great.
We were able to talk with the crew that was up at the time.
That was Rick Husband and Laurel Clark.
We were talking business and science experiments.
Laurel said, "We don't want to talk about that.
Let's talk about families.
How are they doing?" Yes, we're showing hills on PJ 1-19.
After 16 days in space, the crew on Columbia finishes up their experiments and prepares to come home.
The mission had been an incredible success.
They had achieved every experiment, every task that had been given them.
Everything went extremely well.
So we were incredibly proud of them, very excited.
Yes, we're showing hills on PJ 1-19.
Once we get done with the orbit prep.
Hey, Rick, thanks for that tagup, and we concur with all.
It takes a lot of time to get the space shuttle ready to come down.
There's a 3-hour time period after we first wake up that's just involved with housekeeping, cleaning up everything, having breakfast, having some coffee, and all of those kinds of things.
Meanwhile, you're hoping that the weather down at your landing site is going to be suitable to let you come in and land that day.
Come in at Runway 33 end of the Shuttle Landing Facility or the Runway 15 end.
For every launch and every landing, we fly the 238 and just check real time with the weather so that they know, "Here's what you can expect for a landing.
" All ready.
The good news about this flight was that the landing and the launch were at reasonable times.
Columbia, Houston, good burn.
No trim required.
Leroy Cain is the flight director in Mission Control.
No problem.
Okay.
You want the whole thing or just the catch? Inside Columbia, Laurel Clark films the crew as the orbiter slows down for reentry.
So you're gonna hit the air going 17,500 miles an hour.
Tell me when there's good stuff.
There's nothing to look at right now.
You cannot believe the speed out the window.
It's fantastically fast.
You cannot have a bumpy ride in a shuttle.
It cannot do that.
It'll lose control.
So the shuttle cannot be bumpy.
Go ahead and make sure you check your suit pressure integrity, too.
I don't have my gloves on yet.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
And you can tell when you start hitting the Earth's atmosphere, because you'll start to see a little bit of a glow outside your window.
It's white-hot outside.
It's just as bright as day.
And the air outside is 9,000 degrees.
Well, that's hotter than the surface of the sun.
This is amazing.
It's really getting fairly bright out there.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to be outside now.
Peak temperatures last about 10 minutes.
Unlike earlier NASA spacecraft, satellites relay communications to the ground so the shuttle doesn't experience radio blackout during reentry.
And as the clock counted down the minutes, we began to anticipate what direction the shuttle was gonna land.
Columbia is right on track toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center at 8:16 a.
m.
Central.
And there's actually a lot of just excitement.
And, gosh, we can hardly wait to be with our loved ones.
I've got "16" written here.
Yeah, 22, 10, 16.
Yeah, 22, 10, 16.
Houston, we'll get to 304 in five minutes.
Rick, we're ready for ops 304.
Everything appears routine until about 17 minutes before landing.
EECOM? F Yl, I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle -- the hydraulic return temperature.
And then, all of a sudden, you're getting communication that I'd never heard before.
Columbia, Houston.
We see your tire-pressure messages, and we did not -- Is it instrumentation, Max? Max, those are also off.
Roger.
I knew right away there was something unusual about it.
The communication that said the tire-pressure alarm had gone off.
Flight EECOM.
EECOM.
I've got four temperature sensors on the bottom-line data that are off-scale low.
We train for low tire pressure over and over again in the simulators.
We train for these contingencies.
Columbia, Houston.
UHF com check.
And the Cap Com trying to call the shuttle, and all you heard was, "Com check, com check.
" Columbia, Houston.
Com check.
- Flight, FIDO.
- Go.
121/2 minutes to touchdown, according to clocks in Mission Control.
And I remember watching the clock count down to zero.
There was no sonic boom, no landing.
And we all stood there in absolute sickening, surreal silence, knowing that something was wrong.
Flight, I'd like to stay where we're at.
See them go erratic for a little bit before they went away, so I do believe it's instrumentation.
Okay.
FIDO, when are you expecting tracking? One minute to go, Flight.
I can remember just getting that kind of shaking, "Oh, no" feeling.
But also, the first thing that went through my mind was, you know, a flashback to Challenger.
We do not have any valid data at this time.
Okay.
I had a key to the flight-surgeon office, and I turned the TV on.
And, of course, there was a Dallas TV station that had video footage, I mean, almost instantly.
And you can see the streak and then multiple streaks and then, like, a starburst.
Okay.
No more false hope.
No more wishful thinking.
This is over.
GC, Flight.
Flight, GC.
- Lock the doors.
- Copy.
No phone calls off-site, outside of this room.
Our discussions are on these loops, on the recorded DVIS loops only.
Wreckage from Columbia is found in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
NASA's investigation concludes the foam strike is the cause.
It knocked a hole in it as big as a bowling ball.
The only thing that would've saved Columbia is someone looking at the strike and saying, "Something got hurt.
" For 16 days, they stayed in space, going around and around with this huge hole in their wing.
These people had no chance.
The shuttle is grounded during NASA's investigation.
Ken Bowersox and his crew remain on the space station until the Russians can launch a rescue mission.
We needed to come home aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule, rather than coming home aboard the shuttle.
The hardest thing was the physical part of grieving.
It just takes a while to work through everything that you need to work through.
It's 21/2 years before the shuttle returns to space.
Eileen Collins is the commander of Discovery for STS-114.
This is shuttle launch control, where we see the STS-114 astronauts.
We lost seven of our dear friends.
Terrible tragedy that's very hard for me to go back and relive.
Some people said, "We don't want to risk astronauts' lives.
We need to stop doing this.
" The astronauts don't feel that way.
On behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply in what we do, good luck, Godspeed, and have a little fun up there.
We fly for our country.
We fly for humanity.
We fly for exploration.
We fly for a variety of reasons.
And we don't stop flying because we have accidents.
Lift-off of space shuttle Discovery, beginning America's new journey to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
The Columbia disaster adds a new procedure to the shuttle flight plan.
Discovery flips 360 degrees, allowing the crew in the space station to inspect for damaged tiles.
I did think about the Columbia crew every single day.
We flew their crew picture on our flight deck during the mission.
With the shuttle flying again, the space station can fulfill its original promise -- a city in space.
I'm really, really excited about our completing the lnternational Space Station, because it's a fabulous place.
And it is a huge stepping-stone to going back to the moon for a long duration and then on to Mars.
We have learned so much about our space environment by flying the shuttle.
And now it's time to go farther.
But those are journeys for the future.
When we left Earth, it changed our world.
It's a legacy of small steps and great adventure.
From the first attempts to send rockets beyond the bounds of Earth's atmosphere to the selection of the first astronauts.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are the nation's Mercury astronauts.
I think now I really see how complex their job really was and how brave they were.
Either that or they were crazy.
Project Mercury proves astronauts can survive riding a rocket into the vacuum of space.
But those small steps are only the beginning.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
In Project Gemini, each mission tackles another critical procedure from the Apollo flight plan.
Astronauts learn how to fly to the moon.
By the time we finished Gemini program, we had a solid foundation of technology now to take the step to go to the moon.
T-minus 3 hours, 4 minutes, 32 seconds and counting.
To get there, three men ride a rocket the size of a skyscraper.
It's the most powerful machine ever built.
It had on board about 5 million pounds of high explosives.
We just hoped it wouldn't blow up.
"Okay, guys, it's now time to get down to business.
We're about ready to land a man on the moon.
" 60 seconds.
The descent was very tricky business.
You should have him now, Houston.
We copy you down, Eagle.
Houston, Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
We're breathing again.
Oh, spectacular.
Just spectacular.
Just 12 astronauts walk on the surface of the moon.
This is gonna be a good day, Charlie.
And here we go.
From the dawn of the space age, pioneers on rockets explore new frontiers and fulfill the age-old dream of traveling to other worlds.
Curiosity is the essence of human existence.
It brings about innovation, imagination.
It stimulates the entire society.
Roger.
Roll, Discovery.
It's something almost inherent in us, I believe, to explore, and that's what the space program is about.
The power of space was to raise our aspirations to those things that are possible if we will commit.
The most important thing that we have to pass on to our younger people is that the word "impossible" doesn't exist.
Given the desire to do it, humans can accomplish almost anything.
We have to continue to move forward.
To stop in space is to surrender.
They rode the biggest rocket ever built to the moon.
It was the culmination of more than 10 years of space pioneering and the foundation for exploring worlds beyond our own.
This is the story of our greatest adventure.
NASA is in trouble.
The multibillion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope is out of focus.
Its power and guidance systems are failing, too.
The public, Congress -- I mean, across the board -- you know, pictures of "Hubble the techno-turkey," "Hubble, one of history's great disasters.
" I had neighbors come up to me and say, "You have our sympathy for having to work on such a national disaster.
" They're under enormous pressure to fix it.
If they can't, many fear the agency may not survive.
At NASA, if you are unable to meet mission objectives, then there's a good chance that future funding and support is gonna be very difficult to come by.
The future of the space agency is riding on one of the most daring missions ever attempted.
Let's go to work.
NASA assembles a highly experienced crew.
Their training is the most intense for any astronaut since the Apollo flights.
Story Musgrave leads the repair team.
My part was to understand the mechanics down here on Earth and translate them into work up there.
Musgrave's partner is EVA specialist Jeff Hoffman.
It was the most complex spacewalking mission that NASA had ever undertaken.
It will take five extended EVAs to correct the space telescope's vision.
We couldn't afford unexpected events in the Hubble mission.
It was just too important and too critical that it be done right.
It's hard to hold back good people.
And I can guarantee you, the folks that I had on this team -- I mean, there was no stopping them.
The expectation was huge.
The repair mission was very, very high-profile.
This is shuttle launch control at T-minus 3 hours and holding.
We're standing by for live video of the crew donning their flight suits in the crew quarters, which is located in the Operations and Checkout Building.
This is Kathy Thornton's third shuttle flight and Jeff's Hoffman's fourth.
Mission Specialist Jeff Hoffman.
His pilot, Ken Bowersox.
The head of NASA delivers a personal message to the crew.
The message we got, "Guys, NASA's future is on line, and you're responsible.
" What do you say after that? "Yes, sir.
" 10 9 And we have a go for main engine start.
5 4 3 2 1.
And we have lift-off.
Lift-off of the space shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
I was extremely excited to be able to go up and be one of the people who was gonna rescue Hubble from this disaster.
Go and throttle up.
Go with throttle up.
To rendezvous with Hubble, Endeavour will circle the Earth 16 times a day, raising its altitude on each orbit.
Hubble is 370 miles above the Earth.
It's the highest the space shuttle can fly -- double its normal altitude.
FIDO, Flight.
Your clock is counting down Traveling at 17,500 miles an hour, it takes Endeavour two days to catch up to the space telescope.
- About a minute.
- Okay.
The first view that we get of Hubble is just a point of light off in the distance.
And then, every orbit, it gets brighter and brighter.
I like to use binoculars up there, so I put the binoculars.
"Oh, wow! I can really pick up the solar panels.
" Now it's getting bigger and bigger.
"Wow! That is big!" the bottom of the telescope Hubble is more than 40 feet long and 14 feet wide, with a mass of 24,000 pounds.
We copy.
Mission Specialist Claude Nicollier extends the shuttle's robotic arm and plucks the massive telescope out of the sky.
Space telescope captured.
Houston, Endeavour has a firm handshake with Mr.
Hubble's telescope.
We copy that, Covey, and there are smiles galore down here.
It's quite a sight.
Great work up there, you guys.
It only gets harder from here.
The repair schedule demands an extended spacewalk every day for the next five days.
Hoffman and Musgrave suit up in the air lock before venturing out into the vacuum of space.
Getting ready for a spacewalk takes a lot of time.
Space is a very, very unforgiving environment.
It's unforgiving of mechanical failures.
It's unforgiving of human error.
I mean, if your space suit springs a leak, you can have a very bad day.
They close the inner air-lock hatch, and it's just Story and me on our own.
And we're ready to go to work.
You know, it's showtime.
Okay, it's daylight outside, so you might want to put your visors down.
Visors down.
You're walking out of the tunnel onto the playing field.
I think that's the best way I can put it.
You're on the playing field.
And as I looked around the team at Mission Control, there were some locked jaws.
There were some people kind of tense.
I mean, you could tell.
They had their game face on.
You are expected to do certain things.
You got requirements put on you.
You're not in the stands.
You're not a spectator.
You're doing it.
The first spacewalk targets Hubble's faulty guidance system.
The telescope has six gyroscopes.
Four need to be replaced.
So we have to open up these big doors.
And then Story would actually insert himself underneath the gyroscopes.
It was a fairly tight space.
Right now, the bottom of the telescope I could not get up under there and then move.
There was no room.
And Jeff took me by the boots, and he fed me up inside the telescope.
You have to be very careful of debris, contamination.
So there's a lot of constraints on what we're doing.
Come hell or high water, we had to go get this done.
I did not want to do that first spacewalk and leave anything undone.
And I was basically beating the drum.
You know, "Let's keep it up.
Let's keep going.
" Two hours later, the first repair is a success.
- Endeavour, Houston.
- Go ahead.
Not to get you spun up, but we have six good gyros on the telescope.
All that remained was to close the door.
We had done it I don't know how many times in the water.
Nobody had ever thought about having problems with the doors.
I could get either the bottom or the top latch closed, but not both.
The bottom is engaged I think we got the door closed.
If you can't get the doors closed, you've lost the thermal control and you might have leaks.
You basically run a risk of losing the telescope.
Well, you can't leave Hubble up there with open doors.
That would've been a disaster.
The very tense moment, and I think my mind kind of blanks it out.
- No, don't do it yet.
- Okay.
I'm gonna try to get on the bottom.
On each orbit of the Earth, Hoffman and Musgrave pass from daylight into darkness every 45 minutes.
Working in extremes of hot and cold, they wrestle with a few inexpensive latches that could ruin a multimillion-dollar rescue.
Finally, Story and I came up with the idea that if we took a ratcheting strap -- basically, to exert the pressure on his bottom part of the door -- He could do that with one hand and hold on and work the latch with the other hand.
But the ratcheting straps could do more harm than good.
Problem was, you can exert about 2,000 pounds of force with these things.
Enough to crush Hubble.
Team on the ground was conflicted on whether what Story was gonna do would be safe or not.
I think they had visions of Hubble collapsing like, you know, an aluminum beer can.
Mission Control can abandon the spacewalk or allow the astronauts to improvise on the world's most expensive telescope.
Cycle it back and forth and it tends to work the striker plate through.
I thought, "Well, here we go.
We're gonna start talking about this, and we're gonna get behind.
" So I made a decision to go ahead and say, "We're gonna do what Story wants to do.
" - You are a go to do that, Tom.
- Okay.
I'm putting the come-along on, Jeff up top, me on the bottom.
We held the doors in alignment.
And then I just moved the handle.
- All right.
- Whew.
Good job, guys.
Story, if you want to grab the PRD and get the PA.
Well, let's leave the PRD There's no letup for the crew.
Kathy Thornton prepares for the second EVA.
These were jam-packed spacewalks.
We had a lot we had to get done.
And they were choreographed very precisely.
Hubble's solar panels need to be upgraded.
Thornton has to retract and remove them, then install new ones.
Velcro strap on the left door.
But Hubble isn't cooperating.
One of them did not come all the way in.
We decided we would take it off and throw it away.
I was to hold on to it on the end of the arm until sunrise so after we let it go, we would see where it went and be sure we were separating from it.
Once again, they're improvising.
If the release goes wrong, the massive solar panel could smash into the telescope or the orbiter.
When the time came to jettison it - You ready? - Yeah, I'm ready.
Okay, they say you got to go for release.
all I did was just let go.
All right, no hands.
Claude pulled me back on the arm.
There it goes.
Bye-bye.
Pilot Ken Bowersox fires the shuttle's thrusters to make sure they're clear of the solar panel.
And when that happened, the plume from the orbiter hit the solar array.
The solar array started flapping.
It's moving.
It's moving and flapping now, huh? To me, it was like the wings of a gigantic prehistoric bird.
I was awestruck.
It was beautiful.
I had the best view in the world on that.
The old solar panel will continue to orbit for years, slowly dropping toward Earth until it burns up in the atmosphere.
Thornton installs the new solar panels, completing her EVA.
So far, the decision to perform back-to-back spacewalks is working.
As each spacewalk was completed, little grins began to show up in Mission Control, which was kind of cool.
But the next two EVAs are the most critical.
The team will install two huge devices to correct Hubble's vision.
The first is a new supercamera the size of a grand piano, called WFPC.
It can see to the end of the universe and is designed to adjust for Hubble's faulty opticals.
The process of installing WFPC is very, very delicate.
This is a very sensitive optical instrument.
You know, I'm holding on to it.
I bang the instrument, I could misalign the optics.
- It's beautiful.
- Okay.
Mission Control runs tests to confirm the camera is working.
We check all this stuff out as we repaired it.
We ran what we call "aliveness check".
They just told us, "You're just gonna have to wait for a few minutes.
" The first signs are good.
The electronics are responding.
On the next EVA, Kathy Thornton installs the most critical optical device, called COSTAR.
It redirects the light coming into Hubble to compensate for the flaw in its main mirror.
It just slid right in there, just as smooth as it could be.
And it was -- It was incredible.
It was like, "This can't be happening.
I must be dreaming this.
Nothing's going wrong.
This can't be Hubble.
" The astronauts complete the most complex repair mission in history.
People have been wondering for years whether we could actually do this mission.
What we had set out to do, we had accomplished.
And, boy, we It's an incredible feeling.
Hubble can now begin to gaze deep into the universe in perfect focus.
We'd done our part.
Now it's gonna be up to the astronomers and scientists to do their part.
I could say unequivocally that if it weren't for the human space program, Hubble would be a piece of orbiting space junk.
Really hard to imagine how different the space agency would probably be now if we hadn't been able to fix Hubble.
Hubble's rescue has saved NASA's reputation.
Now it has the confidence to embark on the most ambitious construction project ever attempted -- the International Space Station.
Hubble showed us that we can do a number of spacewalks during a mission.
We can do more than one at a time.
We can do them back-to-back.
We can do them with two different crews.
And Hubble was probably the start of giving us that extra confidence to go assemble the space station.
And so bring it on.
NASA is building the first city in space.
It lays the foundation for a base of operations on the moon and missions to Mars.
Old rivals in the space race pool their resources for a project too enormous for any one country alone.
The Russians had a long history of long-duration flight under their belt.
We did not.
And so we hoped to learn some of the things from the Russians.
U.
S.
astronauts must learn to fly their rockets and work with totally different space technology.
I'd look across the table at one of my classmates, who was, say, a fighter pilot in the Russian Air Force.
And we trained, just several years prior, to shoot each other down.
Now the level of cooperation is unprecedented.
Interlocking components are being built on different sides of the world.
Every measurement requires extraordinary precision.
It's very difficult to build pieces of hardware -- modules, capsules, space shuttles -- in different parts of the world and have them meet for the very first time on orbit.
In November 1998, a Russian rocket blasts off with the first section of the space station, weighing 21 tons.
One month later, the shuttle Endeavour carries up the first section built by NASA, called Unity.
There goes the needle, rolling.
Houston, Discovery, roll program.
250 miles above the Earth, Mission Specialist Nancy Currie uses the shuttle's robotic arm to bring the two sections together.
It's the first time they've ever been connected.
Houston, Endeavour, we have capture of Zarya.
But the space station has a long way to go.
It's just a 30-ton metal shell.
Pilot Scott Altman's crew carries up fixtures for the interior, to turn it into a home for astronauts.
First, they have to rendezvous and dock with the rapidly expanding space station.
It starts out a point of light in the distance.
And you think, "It's another star.
" It doesn't look any different than everything else out there.
But as you get closer and closer, you start to be able to break out detail.
And you realize it's a place.
The space station is already the size of a 10-story building.
Docking the shuttle is too precise a maneuver for its automatic pilot.
It takes an astronaut's skill.
Everything is going so slow, it seems like, for a while.
But the gains go up, and it feels like the speed goes up.
Your heart rate goes up as you're coming in close, and critical firings until you get that final contact.
And the two vehicles kind of brush into each other.
And you see one of your crewmates call, "Contact".
Houston, we have a capture light.
Altman and his crew outfit the space station's interior.
We were like the finish carpenters for a house, where you go up and you do all the final work to make it ready for human habitation.
We ran electrical lines.
We turned on the lights.
I installed the toilet.
Very glamorous things like that.
When complete, there will be 15 pressurized modules for living and working and an observation area with seven large windows.
On the shuttle's next mission, Mike Lopez-Alegria test-drives a jetpack that will enable residents to work safely outside the station.
You open the hatch, and the planet Earth going by your feet at 5 miles a second.
In the middle of a spacewalk, flying around at 17,500 miles an hour, or 20,000 kilometers an hour, and let go of the spacecraft and just fly along with it.
It's beautiful.
With no sensation of speed in the vacuum of space, Mike L-A drifts away from the shuttle 250 miles above the Florida Keys.
I think the first instinct is amazing, massive, yet fragile thing that you're flying around, that's where you just came from.
That's where everything that you know about and have ever experienced all lives, and you're not there anymore.
The jetpack is a success.
It shows how far the art of spacewalking has come since Ed White and Gene Cernan first left their Gemini capsules.
Today I watch these kids flying the EVAs.
And they get out there, that's part of their repertoire.
They'll do it five, six, seven hours at a time.
I was just glad to get 20 minutes.
Just two weeks after Mike L-A's extraordinary spacewalk, astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts prepare for the next mission.
They will be the first crew to live long-term on the space station.
The Soyuz spacecraft has none of the comforts of the shuttle.
Unlike the shuttle, it can only fly once.
Every day in orbit, they fly the distance of a trip to the moon.
The International Space Station is starting to take shape inside and out.
Projected to cost $ 157 billion, it's the most expensive object ever built by man.
A new crew takes up residence every three to four months.
Each brings more building blocks and more supplies.
There's stuff everywhere.
There are experiments and laptops and tethers and electrical cords and Velcro patches.
A wonderful place to live and work.
Throughout 2002, the pace of construction speeds up.
Commander Ken Bowersox and his crew will install a central truss.
It's the foundation for all future expansion of the space station.
Now it's real.
It's not just training anymore.
This is a real mission.
It's a real flight.
7 6 Go for main engines.
That's the preliminary signal that something really great is about to happen.
But the best one is when the solid rocket boosters light.
You feel this kick in your back that the vehicle has jumped off the pad.
And lift-off of space shuttle Endeavour.
Another building block for the foundation of the International Space Station.
And off you go into space.
Welcome to station.
Yeah.
Bolshoi spasiba.
Great job.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Very nice docking.
Beautiful.
Good to see you.
Come in.
All right.
Let's go in! Bowersox and his crew load in their gear and supplies.
The current crew will head home on the same shuttle.
This is a very important day in the life of station and in the lives of all the crew members here.
The Expedition Five crew has done tremendous work.
I only hope that my crew -- Don, Nikolai, and I -- will be able to work as well over the next four or however many months we end up living on station.
Hopefully, more than four.
When Endeavour leaves, the Bowersox crew is alone in space until the next shuttle arrives to take them home.
Houston, physical separation.
Endeavour departing.
We wish you a safe landing.
Endeavour, Houston, you are on glide slope, on center line.
Main gear touchdown.
We're rolling out on Runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center, wrapping up a 5.
7 million-mile mission, bringing home the Expedition Five crew after more than a half year in space.
With Ken Bowersox on the space station, 2003 is scheduled to be the shuttle's busiest year yet.
But first, Columbia flies a special science mission.
Unlike the majority of space-shuttle missions now, which are space-station assembly where they're doing essentially heavy construction, Columbia STS-107 mission was a dedicated science mission.
Laurel Clark.
Mission specialist on her first flight.
I'd seen other shuttle launches, but it was a personal launch, 'cause my wife was on it.
And there's some TV monitors.
A few days before launch, Laurel Clark makes a home movie for their son, Ian.
Say hi.
Hi, Ian Blair.
I love you.
I'll see you soon.
It won't be that long.
You can actually see "Columbia" on the side of the vehicle.
Laurel's role in this mission was mission specialist, and their job is basically to run the experiments.
Streaming past the commander and the pilot.
Hi, Ian! So, whoever else is watching this, this is the external tank back here.
Main engines are way down.
You can't see them, but that's where the lines go into.
Oh, my gosh.
Columbia's commander is Rick Husband.
The commander's role is to be the leader of the crew.
But it's also one that facilitates the cohesion of the group.
And our astronauts coming out now.
I talked to him on the phone the morning of the mission, and he was very excited.
The weather was absolutely beautiful and perfect.
Commander Rick Husband and Mission Specialist Laurel Clark.
And you can see Husband climbing in.
Somewhat difficult.
Cramped quarters there.
David Brown and Laurel Clark as they await their turn to get on the vehicle.
Welcome aboard, Rick.
Thank you very much.
Good morning, Jim.
10 9 8 7 We have a go for main engine start.
5 4 3 2 1.
We have booster ignition and lift-off of space shuttle Columbia with a multitude of national and international space-research experiments.
Houston now controlling the flight of Columbia.
The international research mission finally under way.
Roger.
Roll, Columbia.
I was not nearly as anxious watching Rick launch into space the second time because it was an experience I had already had.
But I was very keenly aware of the exact moment when Challenger broke apart.
Columbia, Houston, you're go at throttle up.
You know, that time frame is forever embedded in people's memories.
The "throttle up" call acknowledged by Commander Rick Husband.
And even now, there's a sense of relief when you get past that point.
But people need to understand that space flight is risky business.
That's firm.
Got that.
Off staging.
I was very excited for Rick and also knew that he would orbit the earth at least once before we would get back to our hotel.
We're gonna do 1.
50, the orbiter up.
Dave Brown there on the right.
The entire cargo bay is filled with one large work area, outfitted as a laboratory in space.
STS-107 will conduct over 30 basic experiments only possible in space.
Their mission was a science mission.
They had the earth science and the physical science, and they had life sciences -- growing cells and testing various things on them.
My wife's involvement was with cancer-cell growth.
Insert the cartridge that she has filled Each of the crew that had one of these experiments to be responsible for -- They were always very excited about that.
I'm in a unique position because I work both as a flight surgeon and as a spouse.
One week before the landing, I worked a shift on Saturday morning.
And I remember going through the logbooks and seeing all those concerns about a foam strike.
It's standard procedure to film every shuttle launch with high-speed cameras.
Two cameras picked up images that looked very suspicious.
There was an object that came off.
The vehicle struck it, and there was a plume that was generated.
Some people said, "Oh, it's probably just foam.
And how bad is foam?" You know, it wouldn't be that much of a concern.
Much like you hit a Styrofoam block on the highway.
The crew is told the foam strike is not a cause for concern.
Life goes on aboard Columbia.
Orbiting 100 miles above them, Ken Bowersox is entering his 14th week living on the lnternational Space Station.
We'd already been there a couple months.
The atmosphere got very quiet aboard the station, because you could tell that the ground was focusing on Columbia and not really thinking as much about the space station.
We knew that as soon as Columbia was finished, the spotlight was gonna swing back to space station and things were gonna get very busy as we prepared for the next few weeks for the upcoming shuttle flight that was supposed to bring us home.
Hey, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter.
Z ero-G baseball.
Good morning, Ken.
Good morning, Laurel.
We did have one chance to make radio contact with the Columbia crew, and that was really great.
We were able to talk with the crew that was up at the time.
That was Rick Husband and Laurel Clark.
We were talking business and science experiments.
Laurel said, "We don't want to talk about that.
Let's talk about families.
How are they doing?" Yes, we're showing hills on PJ 1-19.
After 16 days in space, the crew on Columbia finishes up their experiments and prepares to come home.
The mission had been an incredible success.
They had achieved every experiment, every task that had been given them.
Everything went extremely well.
So we were incredibly proud of them, very excited.
Yes, we're showing hills on PJ 1-19.
Once we get done with the orbit prep.
Hey, Rick, thanks for that tagup, and we concur with all.
It takes a lot of time to get the space shuttle ready to come down.
There's a 3-hour time period after we first wake up that's just involved with housekeeping, cleaning up everything, having breakfast, having some coffee, and all of those kinds of things.
Meanwhile, you're hoping that the weather down at your landing site is going to be suitable to let you come in and land that day.
Come in at Runway 33 end of the Shuttle Landing Facility or the Runway 15 end.
For every launch and every landing, we fly the 238 and just check real time with the weather so that they know, "Here's what you can expect for a landing.
" All ready.
The good news about this flight was that the landing and the launch were at reasonable times.
Columbia, Houston, good burn.
No trim required.
Leroy Cain is the flight director in Mission Control.
No problem.
Okay.
You want the whole thing or just the catch? Inside Columbia, Laurel Clark films the crew as the orbiter slows down for reentry.
So you're gonna hit the air going 17,500 miles an hour.
Tell me when there's good stuff.
There's nothing to look at right now.
You cannot believe the speed out the window.
It's fantastically fast.
You cannot have a bumpy ride in a shuttle.
It cannot do that.
It'll lose control.
So the shuttle cannot be bumpy.
Go ahead and make sure you check your suit pressure integrity, too.
I don't have my gloves on yet.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
And you can tell when you start hitting the Earth's atmosphere, because you'll start to see a little bit of a glow outside your window.
It's white-hot outside.
It's just as bright as day.
And the air outside is 9,000 degrees.
Well, that's hotter than the surface of the sun.
This is amazing.
It's really getting fairly bright out there.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to be outside now.
Peak temperatures last about 10 minutes.
Unlike earlier NASA spacecraft, satellites relay communications to the ground so the shuttle doesn't experience radio blackout during reentry.
And as the clock counted down the minutes, we began to anticipate what direction the shuttle was gonna land.
Columbia is right on track toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center at 8:16 a.
m.
Central.
And there's actually a lot of just excitement.
And, gosh, we can hardly wait to be with our loved ones.
I've got "16" written here.
Yeah, 22, 10, 16.
Yeah, 22, 10, 16.
Houston, we'll get to 304 in five minutes.
Rick, we're ready for ops 304.
Everything appears routine until about 17 minutes before landing.
EECOM? F Yl, I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle -- the hydraulic return temperature.
And then, all of a sudden, you're getting communication that I'd never heard before.
Columbia, Houston.
We see your tire-pressure messages, and we did not -- Is it instrumentation, Max? Max, those are also off.
Roger.
I knew right away there was something unusual about it.
The communication that said the tire-pressure alarm had gone off.
Flight EECOM.
EECOM.
I've got four temperature sensors on the bottom-line data that are off-scale low.
We train for low tire pressure over and over again in the simulators.
We train for these contingencies.
Columbia, Houston.
UHF com check.
And the Cap Com trying to call the shuttle, and all you heard was, "Com check, com check.
" Columbia, Houston.
Com check.
- Flight, FIDO.
- Go.
121/2 minutes to touchdown, according to clocks in Mission Control.
And I remember watching the clock count down to zero.
There was no sonic boom, no landing.
And we all stood there in absolute sickening, surreal silence, knowing that something was wrong.
Flight, I'd like to stay where we're at.
See them go erratic for a little bit before they went away, so I do believe it's instrumentation.
Okay.
FIDO, when are you expecting tracking? One minute to go, Flight.
I can remember just getting that kind of shaking, "Oh, no" feeling.
But also, the first thing that went through my mind was, you know, a flashback to Challenger.
We do not have any valid data at this time.
Okay.
I had a key to the flight-surgeon office, and I turned the TV on.
And, of course, there was a Dallas TV station that had video footage, I mean, almost instantly.
And you can see the streak and then multiple streaks and then, like, a starburst.
Okay.
No more false hope.
No more wishful thinking.
This is over.
GC, Flight.
Flight, GC.
- Lock the doors.
- Copy.
No phone calls off-site, outside of this room.
Our discussions are on these loops, on the recorded DVIS loops only.
Wreckage from Columbia is found in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
NASA's investigation concludes the foam strike is the cause.
It knocked a hole in it as big as a bowling ball.
The only thing that would've saved Columbia is someone looking at the strike and saying, "Something got hurt.
" For 16 days, they stayed in space, going around and around with this huge hole in their wing.
These people had no chance.
The shuttle is grounded during NASA's investigation.
Ken Bowersox and his crew remain on the space station until the Russians can launch a rescue mission.
We needed to come home aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule, rather than coming home aboard the shuttle.
The hardest thing was the physical part of grieving.
It just takes a while to work through everything that you need to work through.
It's 21/2 years before the shuttle returns to space.
Eileen Collins is the commander of Discovery for STS-114.
This is shuttle launch control, where we see the STS-114 astronauts.
We lost seven of our dear friends.
Terrible tragedy that's very hard for me to go back and relive.
Some people said, "We don't want to risk astronauts' lives.
We need to stop doing this.
" The astronauts don't feel that way.
On behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply in what we do, good luck, Godspeed, and have a little fun up there.
We fly for our country.
We fly for humanity.
We fly for exploration.
We fly for a variety of reasons.
And we don't stop flying because we have accidents.
Lift-off of space shuttle Discovery, beginning America's new journey to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
The Columbia disaster adds a new procedure to the shuttle flight plan.
Discovery flips 360 degrees, allowing the crew in the space station to inspect for damaged tiles.
I did think about the Columbia crew every single day.
We flew their crew picture on our flight deck during the mission.
With the shuttle flying again, the space station can fulfill its original promise -- a city in space.
I'm really, really excited about our completing the lnternational Space Station, because it's a fabulous place.
And it is a huge stepping-stone to going back to the moon for a long duration and then on to Mars.
We have learned so much about our space environment by flying the shuttle.
And now it's time to go farther.
But those are journeys for the future.
When we left Earth, it changed our world.
It's a legacy of small steps and great adventure.
From the first attempts to send rockets beyond the bounds of Earth's atmosphere to the selection of the first astronauts.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are the nation's Mercury astronauts.
I think now I really see how complex their job really was and how brave they were.
Either that or they were crazy.
Project Mercury proves astronauts can survive riding a rocket into the vacuum of space.
But those small steps are only the beginning.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
In Project Gemini, each mission tackles another critical procedure from the Apollo flight plan.
Astronauts learn how to fly to the moon.
By the time we finished Gemini program, we had a solid foundation of technology now to take the step to go to the moon.
T-minus 3 hours, 4 minutes, 32 seconds and counting.
To get there, three men ride a rocket the size of a skyscraper.
It's the most powerful machine ever built.
It had on board about 5 million pounds of high explosives.
We just hoped it wouldn't blow up.
"Okay, guys, it's now time to get down to business.
We're about ready to land a man on the moon.
" 60 seconds.
The descent was very tricky business.
You should have him now, Houston.
We copy you down, Eagle.
Houston, Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
We're breathing again.
Oh, spectacular.
Just spectacular.
Just 12 astronauts walk on the surface of the moon.
This is gonna be a good day, Charlie.
And here we go.
From the dawn of the space age, pioneers on rockets explore new frontiers and fulfill the age-old dream of traveling to other worlds.
Curiosity is the essence of human existence.
It brings about innovation, imagination.
It stimulates the entire society.
Roger.
Roll, Discovery.
It's something almost inherent in us, I believe, to explore, and that's what the space program is about.
The power of space was to raise our aspirations to those things that are possible if we will commit.
The most important thing that we have to pass on to our younger people is that the word "impossible" doesn't exist.
Given the desire to do it, humans can accomplish almost anything.
We have to continue to move forward.
To stop in space is to surrender.