NASA Columbia disaster: The investigation into one of history’s worst space tragedies – and its lasting legacy
Scott Hubbard remembers exactly where he was on the day of one of the deadliest tragedies in the history of space travel.
Before he stepped out of bed on the morning of 1 February 2003, a radio broadcast brought news that NASA’s Columbia space shuttle was “overdue” on its return to Earth.
“I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something had gone wrong,” he recalls.
The spacecraft, which had launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida just over two weeks prior, with seven astronauts aboard, was scheduled to land that morning.
But the landing never came.
Columbia, which flew its maiden voyage back in April 1981, disintegrated over Texas 16 minutes before its planned Florida touchdown, killing its entire crew. They were commander Rick Husband; pilot William McCool; the mission specialists Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, David Brown and Kalpana Chawla; and payload specialist Ilan Ramon, who was the first Israeli astronaut.
L/R: The Columbia crew – David Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, William McCool, Ilan Ramon. Pic: NASA
It marked the beginning of the end for America’s space shuttle programme, which had already endured the loss of seven astronauts in the Challenger disaster of 1986.
For Hubbard, a veteran of the US space agency who served as its first Mars programme director, Columbia changed his view of rocket launches forever.
“When that low-frequency rumble, that pressure wave hits you, you have a feeling of awe about the power that is being used to lift out of the gravity well of the Earth. But having had the Columbia experience, when I see a launch that has people on board, there’s that extra sense of anxiety: ‘Have I done everything possible to ensure mission success?'”
The crew pictured aboard Columbia during its final mission. Pic: NASA
The call that changed everything
Before the loss of the crew was even confirmed, Hubbard received a call from the NASA administrator’s office asking him to represent the agency in an investigation into what happened.
The administrator at the time was Sean O’Keefe, who was with the families of the astronauts when it became clear something was wrong.
“The mood went from excitement and anticipation to despair, once it became evident that the shuttle wasn’t coming home,” he tells Sky News.
“Normally, you can set your watch as to when the shuttle will come through the atmosphere. Just like a launch day, we had a countdown clock, with these big numbers that would progressively roll downwards.
“It got to within about two minutes of 00 – usually before you see the shuttle, you hear two sonic booms as the shuttle passes the sound barrier, which tells you it’s about to land. Neither sonic boom showed up.”
The breakup of Columbia had already occurred, its wreckage raining down on Texas while the crew’s loved ones waited unawares at the Kennedy Space Center.
Not long later, the official investigation was launched.
Scott Hubbard was picked as the only NASA representative on the investigative board to work with Air Force generals, Navy admirals, and former US astronauts to paint a detailed picture of why Columbia ended in tragedy.
“I knew, if we were facing loss of the crew, that this would be having the same impact on the agency that the Challenger accident had years before,” he says.
“So I went into this with a determination to do whatever I could.”
NASA’s mission control centre at the moment it lost contact with Columbia. Pic: NASA
‘The most difficult duty’
The Columbia investigation was expected to last 30 days. It ended up taking six months.
Beginning with seven-day work weeks from a base outside Johnson Space Center in Houston, Hubbard labels it the “most difficult duty” of his 20 years at NASA.
“The first part was the very sad search and recovery operation for the remains of the crew, so the families could have some closure,” he says. Remains for all seven astronauts were found.
Some 25,000 people were involved in efforts to collect pieces of the wreckage, O’Keefe recalls, which was strewn across a 200-mile swathe of land from Dallas to the Louisiana border.
Tributes left outside NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
Hubbard’s background in science and engineering saw him assigned to focus on the technical cause of the accident.
“Initially, it was circumstantial evidence,” recalls Hubbard.
“There was only one good, high-resolution image of this piece of foam falling off of the main tank and hitting the shuttle somewhere on its left wing, and then a spray of debris coming out.”
That incident had occurred not during re-entry, but after the launch on 16 January – 82 seconds into the flight.
Mission control notified the commander and pilot, who were assured that – because it had happened on previous missions too – there was no reason for alarm when it came to re-entry.
Still from a video of the launch showing the moment of foam impact on the wing. Pic: NASA
Proving the cause of the tragedy
But when Columbia re-entered the atmosphere, the damage to the wing let in “superheated gases” that led to the destruction of the wing and subsequent disintegration of the entire shuttle.
“Foam falling off had been happening since the very first flight of the shuttle, 30 years before,” says Hubbard.
“But while it was originally labelled an in-flight anomaly, which is the most serious of problems, it eventually became considered a turnaround issue, just a maintenance thing, and was demoted in its seriousness.
“We think this casual approach, to what was a serious issue, was one of the organisational causes of the accident.”
G. Scott Hubbard during a news briefing on the investigation into the disaster
Due to a “sense of denial” among those who were interviewed during the investigation, Hubbard says he pushed for a test that would look to recreate the so-called anomaly, settling on a research facility in Texas used to simulate the impact of a bird striking parts of an aeroplane.
Over the course of months, it was configured to the specifications of what happened to Columbia.
The test was carried out on live TV on 7 July 2003 – and the result was beyond doubt.
“It caused two emotions in me simultaneously,” Hubbard recalls.
“One was ‘yes, we proved it’, and the other was, ‘oh my God, this is how these people died’.
“And that was… quite a moment.”
The legacy of Columbia
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s full report – which O’Keefe received 10 days before its publication in August 2003 – made 29 recommendations to improve the safety of future space shuttle flights, all of which were adopted by NASA.
They included that foam falling from the shuttle’s external tank during launch, as had been accepted as par for the course among NASA engineers, should no longer be allowed to happen.
The agency has not lost astronauts during spaceflight since.
“It was a hard-hitting report,” says O’Keefe. “Nothing was light about it. It was very critical, however, that’s what we needed to hear.”
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NASA commemorates the victims of Columbia, as well as its other fallen astronauts, every January, with flowers laid and tributes read during a memorial service at Kennedy Space Center.
The site at Cape Canaveral has been a hub of excitement since November, when the launch of the Artemis mission kicked off NASA’s bid to return people to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
Space is also increasingly the playground of private enterprise, with the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin setting themselves grand targets to go further than humans have before. A worthy venture, O’Keefe says, but – for all the wonder so many feel upon witnessing a launch – never one that should see people lose sight of the risk.
“The nature of it just scared me every single time,” he admits. “Everybody who talked about shuttle launches that are ‘routine’ – there is no such thing. Every one of them is an opportunity for disaster, and that’s the nature of it.
“But over the course of human history, we have done things that are inherently dangerous because our curiosity gets the better of us.”
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Why are we still racing to space?
For Hubbard, who became chairman of SpaceX’s safety panel in 2012, with Elon Musk among those receiving his advice, the lessons learned from Columbia are only growing in importance.
“Space is a hard thing to do, launching humans into space is difficult, and we have been fortunate that thus far there have been relatively few disasters,” he tells Sky News. (NASA has lost 15 astronauts during spaceflight: seven in Columbia and Challenger, and one, Michael Adams, in a sub-orbital flight in 1967.)
Hubbard says the experience of Columbia “profoundly changed” his view of human exploration of space, but our collective ambition to go further, faster, is only going one way.
“Any rocket you send up there, you can’t say with any certainty it’s going to be just fine,” says O’Keefe. “But the alternative is: ‘let’s not go?’ And the answer is, you can’t relent to that.”
US
Charlie Kirk suspect Tyler Robinson ‘was in romantic relationship with transgender roommate’ – Utah governor
The suspect accused of shooting dead right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was in a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate, Utah’s governor has said.
Tyler Robinson, 22, from Washington in Utah, is due to appear in court on Tuesday after Kirk, 31, was killed during one of his rallies at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
Robinson is being held without bail on suspicion of aggravated murder, a felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice.
According to Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer James Cox, he was in a relationship with his roommate – who was in the process of transitioning.
“The roommate was a romantic partner,” he told NBC News’s Meet The Press on Sunday. “We can confirm that that roommate is a boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female.”
He added that the roommate has been “incredibly cooperative” and had “no idea that this [the shooting] was happening”, but that Robinson has not been cooperating with police.
Tyler Robinson. Pic: Utah Governor’s Office
Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University before he was shot. Pic: AP
Kirk, who co-founded the conservative student movement Turning Point USA, regularly expressed anti-LGBTQ views.
The motive of the shooting is unclear, and officials have not said whether Robinson’s relationship – or his roommate’s gender – is relevant to their investigation.
Authorities are still trying to get access to cloud storage linked to Robinson, according to NBC.
Mr Cox has previously said the suspect came from a “conservative family, but his ideology was very different than his family”, adding in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he had been “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology”.
According to the governor, his relatives have said Robinson was critical of Kirk, saying he was “full of hate and spreading hate” and “talked about why he didn’t like him and the viewpoints that he had”.
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Security camera shows Charlie Kirk suspect
The 22-year-old is due to be charged when he makes his first court appearance on Tuesday, according to the Utah County attorney’s office.
He was in his third year of an electrical apprenticeship programme at Dixie Technical College in St George, Utah, NBC reported.
A spokesperson for Utah Valley University, where Kirk was speaking when he was shot in the neck, said Robinson studied there for one semester in 2021.
Kristin Schwiermann, a neighbour of his family’s, described him as “smart” and “quiet”, and added that he “never caused any problems”.
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Woman recalls encounter with Charlie Kirk suspect
Memorial to be held at Super Bowl venue
It was revealed on Sunday that a memorial to Kirk will be held at the stadium where the 2023 US Super Bowl was held.
State Farm Stadium, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, is home to the American football team the Arizona Cardinals and can hold 60,000 people.
President Donald Trump has said he plans to attend and will posthumously award Kirk with the highest US civilian honour – the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Kirk, who hosted his own self-titled podcast, had millions of followers on social media.
He was a regular visitor at the White House and has been credited with the increase in young men voting for Mr Trump at the 2024 presidential election.
Experts have described engravings left on ammunition at the scene of the Charlie Kirk shooting as “extremely online” – so what do the words and symbols actually mean?
Authorities said on Friday that the suspect accused of fatally shooting the Conservative activist left behind bullet casings featuring references to fascism, video games and internet memes.
Kirk at Utah Valley University where he was shot. Pic: Reuters/The Salt Lake Tribune
To those who aren’t chronically online, the messages may appear to be total gibberish. But for others, specifically gamers, many of the meanings will have immediately been clear.
Here’s what each of the casings reference – and why experts have cautioned against using them to make assumptions about the suspect’s political leanings.
1. ‘notices, bulges, OWO, what’s this?’
This writing appears to reference a meme about the furry subculture, which centres on an interest in anthropomorphic animal characters.
Within the furry community, OwO is an emoticon of a cute face (with the Os as the eyes and the w as a cute mouth or nose) and used as a way of flirting – but outside the community, it is often used in a mocking way, or as part of trolling.
It’s incredibly common for phrases used by people who are “extremely online” – which essentially means highly engaged in online culture – to have double or multiple meanings.
For this reason, experts have cautioned against trying to interpret messages such as these engravings to determine an attacker’s political leanings or motive.
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What we know about the shooting arrest
Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies who studies memes at Queens College in New York, said: “Oftentimes this extremely online disguise is meant to be doublespeak.”
Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC News, he continued: “It’s meant specifically for someone like me to dive into what they would call meme culture and declare them something so that they get more press.
“So it could just be another bait and switch for researchers who are falling into the same trap that they are designing for more viral exposure.”
2. ‘Hey, fascist! Catch ↑ → ↓↓↓’
When asked by Sky News’ US correspondent James Matthews what the messages on the casings meant, Utah governor Spencer Cox said the writing referring to a fascist “speaks for itself”.
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Engraving on bullet casing ‘speaks for itself’
The second half of the inscription – the directional arrows – were immediately identified by some gamers.
Helldivers 2 players have pointed out that the arrow sequence is the code used to summon a 500kg bomb in the 2024 game – which itself has been interpreted as a satire of fascism.
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3. ‘Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao’
Bella Ciao is a classic Italian song that became a popular anti-fascism anthem during Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship.
It has won renewed popularity in recent years thanks, in part, to featuring multiple times in Netflix’s Spanish television series Money Heist.
A popular remix of Bella Ciao has hit more than 260 million streams on Spotify worldwide and it’s become a favourite on TikTok, as well as within the gaming community.
Read more:
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The string of bloody political violence in the MAGA era
4. ‘If you read this, you are gay lmao’
This juvenile insult, using the well-known abbreviation for ‘laughing my ass off’, is a common ‘gotcha’ phrase and simply appears to mock investigators.
The messages, another expert has said, make one thing clear – the suspect was likely seeking fame.
Lindsay Hahn, a University at Buffalo associate professor who researches ideological extremism and the ways in which perpetrators of violence justify their actions, said the messages do not necessarily indicate a specific ideology.
“But what they do indicate, is that the shooter wanted to get a message across and therefore be talked about online,” she told NBC.
“It sort of seems like these messages, at the very minimum, were selected because he knew they were going to be talked about.”
A memorial for right-wing US influencer Charlie Kirk will be held next Sunday, in a stadium that previously hosted the 2023 Super Bowl.
The 31-year-old, who was a close ally of Donald Trump, was fatally shot in the neck on Wednesday while speaking to university students at an event in Utah.
His appearance at Utah Valley University was part of a planned tour of US college campuses.
A memorial for Charlie Kirk at Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Pic: Reuters
Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, shortly before he was shot. Pic: AP
Turning Point USA, the prominent youth conservative organisation of which Mr Kirk was the president and co-founder, is holding the event at State Farm Stadium outside Phoenix.
The venue is the home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and can hold more than 60,000 people.
Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Washington, Utah, is being held without bail after being arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm and obstruction of justice charges, according to court documents.
The motivation behind the fatal shooting is still unclear, but Utah governor Spencer Cox commented that Robinson described Mr Kirk as “full of hate and spreading hate”.
Robinson is due to make an initial court appearance on Tuesday, when he is also expected to be charged, the Utah County attorney’s office said.
Tyler Robinson. Pic: Utah Governor’s Office
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Suspect’s movements before and after shooting
President Trump, who will be back in the US after his UK state visit next week, has previously said he plans to attend Mr Kirk’s funeral.
Mr Trump has said he will be posthumously awarding Mr Kirk with the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mr Kirk’s body was flown back from Salt Lake City to his home state of Arizona on Air Force Two on Thursday, with the US vice president and close friend JD Vance on board.
JD Vance helps carry the coffin of Charlie Kirk from Air Force Two in Arizona
His widow, Erika Kirk, has vowed to continue his campus tour and his radio and podcast shows.
Speaking publicly for the first time in a livestreamed video on Friday, she said: “To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die.”
“It won’t. I refuse to let that happen.”
She said she told her three-year-old daughter: “Daddy went on a work trip with Jesus.”
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Charlie Kirk shooting: What bullet inscriptions mean
Read more: What the engravings on bullets in Charlie Kirk case may refer to
Mr Kirk, who was a father of two, had millions of followers across social media.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
A makeshift memorial to Mr Kirk has been set up at Utah Valley University, with flowers, American flags and handwritten messages left at the main entrance.
The university says there will be increased security when classes resume on Wednesday.
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