Space Center video shows face of loss

By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, 2/15/2003

ASHINGTON -- In the minutes after shuttle Columbia lost contact with NASA Mission Control, the flight director said there came a point when he bowed his head to pray, realizing the spacecraft was probably gone forever.

''My prayer was for the crew and their families,'' Leroy Cain, entry flight controller for Columbia, told reporters yesterday.

''At that point, we didn't know the details of the breakup,'' Cain said in a televised news conference from Johnson Space Center in Houston. ''We didn't know the details of the situation as it was. All we knew was that we had a significant event that was probably catastrophic.''

Cain was at the heart of a 20-minute NASA video of Mission Control on Feb. 1. Released earlier yesterday, the video shows Cain frequently rubbing his forehead, covering his mouth, then bowing his head into his hand, and looking up a moment later with a tear coursing down one cheek, as he realized the spacecraft was lost.

Columbia, the space agency's oldest shuttle, disintegrated over Texas minutes after communications were cut on Feb. 1. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. The shuttle had been only 16 minutes from landing in Florida after a 16-day science mission.

Cain said he knew something was horribly wrong from the moment Jeff Kling, in charge of shuttle maintenance and crew systems, told controllers, ''FYI, I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle.''

At that point, Columbia was over the Pacific Ocean, heading toward California, according to the tracking map.

''Is there anything common to them?'' Cain asked about the sensors. ''I mean, you're telling me you lost them all at exactly the same time.''

''No, not exactly,'' Kling replied. ''They were within probably four or five seconds of each other.''

NASA released control-room audio from that period earlier this week, but the video gave a clear picture of the tension when data first became erratic and then when communication with ground controllers was lost altogether.

At least five times, controllers tried to get a signal from the Columbia crew: ''Columbia, Houston UHF comm check?''

There was no response. With the tracking map stopped with the shuttle apparently hanging over central Texas, the mood switched from anxiety to resignation, with Cain asking whether rescue personnel around Dallas were being mobilized to help find the remains of Columbia and its crew.

Cain told reporters that he had asked the question after another NASA staff member told him of unverified reports that witnesses had seen multiple pieces coming down along the path the shuttle should have taken.

He then guided Mission Control staff in procedures in place in the event of catastrophe.

''After all, while we know now that many of the things that we did . . . were futile, we didn't know that then, and, on a different day, they might not be,'' Cain said later.

An independent board to investigate the tragedy was appointed within hours of the shuttle's breakup. Harold Gehman, the chairman of that investigation and a retired US Navy admiral who also investigated the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, said yesterday that he expected to expand the 11-member panel to add members with specific expertise and to cope with an expected heavy workload.

This story ran on page A5 of the Boston Globe on 2/15/2003.
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