Columbia STS-107 Reentry
When the shuttle comes over Calif. its only 220,000 ft high so to see it you need to travel north closer to its ground track. Now I’ve watched from Mammoth, Calif. at 9400ft before and new that would be a good spot.
When I told Gene Blevins about how awesome the re-entry was going to be he really wanted to shoot and see one too. He has seen a Shuttle Launch back in 2000 with me and new this is a very rare event to see. When the Shuttle launched on time Jan 16th that set the landing if weather permitted on Feb. 1st we started thinking about the landing.
Just about a week before landing Gene came over to my shop and we started talking about where we should go to photograph the Shuttle. I thought about Mammoth but Gene being a great photographer said we need to get something in the foreground. He said a streak across the dark sky with just stars in the background wouldn’t be enough. So we started thinking what could be up in that area. We new there are pine tree but again that didn’t seem to be anything that captivating. I then remembered the big radio dishes that I’ve seen just before Bishop on the east side of Hwy 395. We both thought it would be awesome to have some big radio dishes in the foreground. I didn’t know anything about them or who ran them. Gene had a friend from work that drives off road in that area.
He called him and asked him about the dishes and if he knew the name of them. He said he did and I got on google.com and did a search for Owens Valley Radio Observatory and boom there was their web site. We then found some contact names and Gene called and left a message on an answer machine.
We waited until the Monday before landing and he called again a got the name and number of Tony Beasley up at the Observatory. Gene called him on Tuesday Jan.28th the 17th anniversary of the Challenger accident.
Gene said Tony didn’t know the Shuttle was coming over and we were welcome to come up. We planned to meet him the afternoon before landing day. Just incase the dishes didn’t work out we talked about where else we could get. I thought of Mono Lake and called Mike Dornheim from AvWeek about Mono Lake and the statue like fiqurines. We kept that has a backup spot. Gene and I then decided then what type of cameras we wanted to use. How many cameras, lens, etc that we would need. I didn’t have a super wide lens angle Gene contacted a friend and asked if I could borrow a fisheye lens. I was planning on using three cameras for the re-entry. Gene was going to do the same. Gene was worried about how fast and how bright the shuttle would be coming over. Later that day I found videotape from STS-93 re-entry shot from Houston, TX at night. We watched the tape to get a sense of how bright and clear it would be. Over the next few days I checked the weather forecast for the Bishop area and I was waiting for the exact ground track from NASA.
On Thursday, January, 30, 2003 Justin Ray from SpaceFlightNow.com sent me the ground track charts which showed the shuttle coming over north of San Francisco on its way to Florida. That afternoon I went to NASA web site where you can put in your GPS coordinates that I had Bishop. I then printed out an exact chart that showed time, azimuth, elevation and distance of the shuttle re-entry. So now we knew exactly where it was going to come over the horizon, what time, how far away it would be from us.
On Friday January 31, 2003 we headed to Bishop at 1:00p.m. Gene and I drove separately in case Gene had to return to Los Angeles for a news story. We arrived at the Observatory, which is 210 miles north of Burbank, California. We met Tony Beasley. He gave us full range of the Observatory. I asked him we were able to drive to the dishes. Tony said just don’t drive on the tracks and don’t climb on the dishes. When we asked Tony if he would come out and watch the re-entry he indicated that he would probably just watch it from his home. We then drove our trucks out to the six thirty four foot dishes that are all linked by track. We then took our digital cameras out and walked around to get a feel for the area. We quickly learned that the dishes would move to different locations in the sky so we had to come up with different locations depending on which way the dishes were pointing. We then headed to 130-foot dish, which was about 100 yards from the 6 dishes.
We then shot some digital pictures of different angles of the dish and the shuttle track. At one point we talked about me staying at this location and triggering two cameras and Gene staying at the original location. We went back to the six dishes. I told Gene that I would like to stay there until it got dark and see the North Star because the shuttle was going to pass just under it. We then started taking photographs with Gene’s digital with different settings. We tried strobe to light up the dishes with different exposure times. We were pretty satisfied with which exposure we wanted to use. The big question was which way were the dishes going to be pointing in the morning. After 2 ½ hours we had the location we wanted to set up at. We decided to stop by the control room to see if there was anyone available who could tell us which way the dishes would be pointed. Someone was able to tell us that the dishes would be pointed to the left sky. At this time we knew exactly where we would set up the cameras. I went with two films and one digital camera for me. Gene used two digital and one film camera.
We returned to our hotel. We spent the evening preparing the gear for the shoot loading film checking lenses etc. Gene knocked his camera off the table and his best lens broke off the mount. He was more worried about the camera, which was fine, but the lens was lost. He now only had a 75mm lens for his other digital camera. We called it a night and set the alarm for 4:00a.m.
February 1, 2003 arrived. We rose at 4:00a.m. I immediately exited the hotel to check the sky for clarity. The skies were clear. Thank god – we were over our first hurdle. We then logged on to SpaceFlightNow.com to get the latest landing information. To my surprise they were working foggy conditions and high altitude winds. I became concerned that the shuttle would not land on the first opportunity. NASA had not made the decision to land when we had to head out to the location. I kept calling NASA audio for the most current information. At about 5:05a.m. Just as we arrived at the dishes NASA gave the go ahead for the deorbit burn. Which means the shuttle was in fact going to land. I called Gene on our radios and told him the great news. All the worrying if this was going to happen was almost over.
We arrived at the dishes and immediately began setting up the cameras on the tripods. First thing we noticed was it was cold with temperatures in the high twenties. I decided to go with a wide-angle 16mm-35mm film Canon A2 camera pointed to the north over the dishes. My other film camera was going to take a tighter shot, but I had not decided type of shot I wanted. Gene suggested I set up my digital camera vertical with the 3 dishes in the foreground, in an attempt to get a “cover shot.” One reason to use the digital for that is because the digital cameras start to pick up speckles in long exposures at night. Being this was a vertical the exposure would be pretty short. I set my other film camera a Minolta 9 with a 28mm-135mm and was thinking about getting the shuttle coming at us from the west. It was now about 5:35a.m. and I had all the cameras basically ready to go. I then got the remote cords for the A2 and digital hooked up and tested. I went back to the truck for the Minolta remote cord and I couldn’t find it. It turned out it was still in my carry on luggage from the trip to Florida! Well that was a problem with three cameras to worry about. I thought I could either trigger it and hold the release button down or set the exposure for 10-30 seconds.
I rechecked the cameras and noticed the battery in the A-2 and Minolta started going low. I went back to the truck and camera bag I checked for a new battery and again no new batteries because I took them out and put them in my carry on luggage for Florida. I new my flashlight had the same kind of batteries so I took them out and put them in the camera and they also showed low! I put the old ones back in and they showed a little better just from warming up a little in my pocket. I was thinking I would use this camera only if I had the time to use it without screwing up to other two cameras. I then checked the Canon A-2 and had a hard time focusing on the stars. I remembered that the fish-eye lens I used a long time you just put the focus on infinity. I asked Gene and he said just put the focus on infinity. Well it turned out that set on infinity everything is slightly out of focus. I should have checked it in the daylight when you can see sharpness easier.
But I was more concerned with the battery in this camera now it was showing low voltage! The camera battery is in the bottom of the camera where it is mounted to the tripod. Gene was calling off the time and it was now about 5:45a.m. and I thought no way was I going to take the camera off the tripod plus I had no new batteries in the truck but I did have some in my other cameras that I wasn’t using. But time was not on my side and I decided to leave the camera alone and hope for the best. Doing all this time my hands were becoming numb due to the cold. It is very hard and nearly impossible to work on cameras with gloves on. I then had to set the remote cord on the digital camera where I could grab it and trigger the camera. There no good place to hang it and know where the button is when it’s dark outside. I planned on holding the Canon A-2 remote cord in my hand ready to go and after it was locked open I would then go over to the digital camera and trigger that camera. If I had time I would try to get something from the Minolta.
There was one person I was planning on calling about 5:50a.m. in Sacramento and I grabbed my phone to call her but my finders were numb and I had a real problem just trying to enter the phone number. Right then Gene yelled out its 5:52a.m! I new the Shuttle was less then a minute away so I said to myself I can’t call and had to get the remote cord and get ready to start the exposure. Within seconds there was the Shuttle coming over the West horizon. I then yelled out to Gene “There it is”! At first it wasn’t coming that fast but as it got closer the speed picked up. Kind of like watching a train comes down the tracks towards you. It comes at you kind of slow but as it gets closer to you the speed increases until it blows right by you. Well that’s exactly what the shuttle was doing at 16,000mph and only 85 miles away at the closest point.
I new where I wanted to end the exposure and I just wanted to have the shutter open before the shuttle got into the view of the camera. I pressed the button on the remote cord but the button would not lock. I tried again and again. I could hear the motor drive winding the film each time I pressed the button. I guess my finger was so numb I could feel the button enough to hold it down and slide it forward to lock the shutter open. Just when I was getting worried I got it locked! I then dropped that cord and when to the digital camera and found the remote cord and got it locked open. I then got to look up at the shuttle for just a few seconds. I remember saying to myself how bright it was and how fast it was moving. I waited for it to get just to the right side of my frame and unlocked the button to stop the exposure. I then went to the Minolta camera and tried to just hold the button down on the camera without a remote cord but there was no way. I went back to the first camera and tried to fine the remote cord but had trouble in the dark. I looked over at the shuttle, which was now over in the northeast sky to see how close it was to the spot where I wanted to stop the exposure. I picked the dish on the right side as that point.
I still was fishing for the remote cord when it approached the dish so I decided to take my jacket and put it over the lens until I could get the remote cord and unlock the button. That seemed to work. Right after I released the button that’s when Gene said “whoa Bill did you see that? Something just came off the Shuttle”! I looked over at it but I didn’t see anything. Gene said it disappeared within a second or so. I really didn’t think anything of it because it was Gene’s first re-entry and the shuttle is very bright so going behind some clouds it can look like the shuttle gets dimmer or brighter. I just didn’t believe him at that time. I said to him “Are you sure”? He again said he saw something come off. We then checked our digital cameras to see if we got an image. We both did and were happy. We talked about how much brighter and faster then I thought it was going to be. I took several more photos of just the plasma trail that was left across the sky from the west horizon to the east horizon for about 4 minutes. I took about 15 frames at varying exposures of the trail with the film camera and one with the digital camera.
By now my fingers were hurting from the cold and I just wanted to get to the truck and warm them up. I actually put my fingers in the defroster slots to get them thawed out.
Gene came over and told me, “I don’t care what you think I know what I saw and I saw this like red flare drop down from the shuttle.” Well besides wondering if my fingers would ever stop hurting and new then that Gene did see something. I wanted to listen to the NASA audio over the phone but my phone was over my minutes so I didn’t want to call until about 5 minutes before landing. So at 6:10a.m. I called the audio line and within a few seconds I heard the commentator say “last contact with Columbia was over Texas”. I knew right then they lost Columbia and the Crew. I know from all the previous landings at KSC that at 6 minutes before landing the Shuttle should have been in voice, radar and visible sight of the Mila tracking station and long range-tracking camera. I turned to Gene and told him the “They lost the Shuttle, they lost the shuttle and the astronauts are dead!” At first he thought I was kidding just like I thought he didn’t see anything come off the shuttle. But the look on my face he said convinced him immediately. He then said I told you I saw something come off it. Of course I knew he did the second I heard the news. It took a few minutes for it to sink in. We still had to tear all the equipment and load it back in the truck. The sunrise was real beautiful and I just had to take a few shots of the big 130ft. dish with the foreground. I really wanted to drive around and shoot all the dishes but Gene said we should hurry and get the digital images onto the laptops so we could see if they showed anything unusual.
We finished up and drove back to the Control Room. We first were trying to find anyone inside to see if they had a TV set but no one was there. We found a conference room and setup the computer to load the images so we could get a good look at them. My image didn’t show much because of the vertical shot I was going for had a very short trail across it. Gene then got his loaded and saw what now is the #1 flash on the NASA ground chart at 5:54:34a.m. We then zoomed in on the trail and saw a definite change in the streak. We wondered what the film cameras captured. Gene said we have to find a TV set so we powered down and started packing the computers away when Tony Beasley pulled up. I was still inside the Control room when Gene met up with him and Tony said, “That was some light show”
And Gene said “yea right up to it got over Texas” Tony surprise said what? And Gene told him they lost the shuttle. I then came out and Tony was saying he saw something come off the shuttle. I asked him “in the East sky?” And he said yes and he also saw two objects come off in the west sky that maybe looked like tiles. He thought that was normal because they loose tiles all the time. I told him they don’t loose tiles like that on re-entry but they do damage tiles on every launch. It like when a jet looses an engine they don’t physically drop an engine off the wing they just loose the power in it.
I confirmed with him what Gene saw come off in the East sky. Gene asked him if there was a TV in the Control room and he said there is one in another building a little ways away. We headed to that building and watched the video shot over Texas.
The four-hour drive home was difficult with many friends calling asking if I knew what happened not even knowing that I had witnessed and photographed Columbia’s entry. A big surprise was the fact that major news organizations from TV networks to major newspapers and wire services around the country were calling and even waiting for us at my place of business, the photo lab and the Daily News. Still to this day Gene and I do not know how these folks found out about us because neither one of us called them.
The next day Sunday Feb. 2nd NASA called Gene and I requesting our photos and a report about what we saw and camera settings be sent immediately and within a couple of hours we sent them off. A little over a week later we both got a call from a NASA Flight Director about our photos and questions again about what we saw. They also were requesting the original negatives or copy negatives. We sent 4x5 copy negatives to them a few days later. We received another call about a week later from a NASA Senior Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory. She explained that they really need the original negatives to do some type of spectrum analyzing of the shuttle and plasma trail. She said they might be able to tell what was coming off the Shuttle when it came over Calif. If they had the original negatives. She also said we would also be contacted by the NASA Procurement Office about buying all of our photo equipment that we used that morning. To do a complete spectrum analyzing of the shuttle you would have to have the lens and the camera.
Mean while I talked to Gene and sending our original negatives and I sent mine in and Gene waited for some type of insurance if they lost or damaged his. He did get something in writing and sent his one film negative in the day after I sent mine in.
We were working on a price of the equipment for replacement, which was somewhat difficult because I had a Canon lens on my film camera that was owned by the Daily News. And the Lens I had on my Digital was a loaner from a Camera Store because my lens was getting repaired. Gene’s film camera and lens was also from the Daily News. So we had three different Invoices just for the camera equipment. And one Invoice for rental equipment because Gene needs cameras for his job and could not sent his equipment to them without having cameras for work.
With everything agreed too we sent our equipment to NASA on March 7th. In July 03 I called NASA to find out if there was any useful data obtained from the negatives and she informed me they were still working on them even though NASA’s Early Sightings Assessment Team Final Report was completed in June 03.
In September 03 I went with Aviation Week to the Johnson Space Center in Houston where much of the accident investigation was being conducted, and was able to talk to Paul Hill, who had headed the image analysis. He told me that they had received about 20-25 still or digital images but it was the videotapes that had proven most useful in determining when parts came off the shuttle, which was used to estimate where to look for the parts on the ground. It sounded like he was not aware that the spectral analysis was still being done and that probably enough other data survived the accident that it was not needed.
So in the end the pictures did not play a big role in the investigation, but Gene’s picture appears in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, mislabeled as being near the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico instead of the Owens Valley Radio Observatory. My vertical shot became the cover for Aviation Week on Feb. 10, and I think it is one of the most fitting and poignant images of this tragedy.
You can see my STS-107 Columbia launch photo's at this site: http://www.ktb.net/~billmeco/sts107.html
Read MoreWhen I told Gene Blevins about how awesome the re-entry was going to be he really wanted to shoot and see one too. He has seen a Shuttle Launch back in 2000 with me and new this is a very rare event to see. When the Shuttle launched on time Jan 16th that set the landing if weather permitted on Feb. 1st we started thinking about the landing.
Just about a week before landing Gene came over to my shop and we started talking about where we should go to photograph the Shuttle. I thought about Mammoth but Gene being a great photographer said we need to get something in the foreground. He said a streak across the dark sky with just stars in the background wouldn’t be enough. So we started thinking what could be up in that area. We new there are pine tree but again that didn’t seem to be anything that captivating. I then remembered the big radio dishes that I’ve seen just before Bishop on the east side of Hwy 395. We both thought it would be awesome to have some big radio dishes in the foreground. I didn’t know anything about them or who ran them. Gene had a friend from work that drives off road in that area.
He called him and asked him about the dishes and if he knew the name of them. He said he did and I got on google.com and did a search for Owens Valley Radio Observatory and boom there was their web site. We then found some contact names and Gene called and left a message on an answer machine.
We waited until the Monday before landing and he called again a got the name and number of Tony Beasley up at the Observatory. Gene called him on Tuesday Jan.28th the 17th anniversary of the Challenger accident.
Gene said Tony didn’t know the Shuttle was coming over and we were welcome to come up. We planned to meet him the afternoon before landing day. Just incase the dishes didn’t work out we talked about where else we could get. I thought of Mono Lake and called Mike Dornheim from AvWeek about Mono Lake and the statue like fiqurines. We kept that has a backup spot. Gene and I then decided then what type of cameras we wanted to use. How many cameras, lens, etc that we would need. I didn’t have a super wide lens angle Gene contacted a friend and asked if I could borrow a fisheye lens. I was planning on using three cameras for the re-entry. Gene was going to do the same. Gene was worried about how fast and how bright the shuttle would be coming over. Later that day I found videotape from STS-93 re-entry shot from Houston, TX at night. We watched the tape to get a sense of how bright and clear it would be. Over the next few days I checked the weather forecast for the Bishop area and I was waiting for the exact ground track from NASA.
On Thursday, January, 30, 2003 Justin Ray from SpaceFlightNow.com sent me the ground track charts which showed the shuttle coming over north of San Francisco on its way to Florida. That afternoon I went to NASA web site where you can put in your GPS coordinates that I had Bishop. I then printed out an exact chart that showed time, azimuth, elevation and distance of the shuttle re-entry. So now we knew exactly where it was going to come over the horizon, what time, how far away it would be from us.
On Friday January 31, 2003 we headed to Bishop at 1:00p.m. Gene and I drove separately in case Gene had to return to Los Angeles for a news story. We arrived at the Observatory, which is 210 miles north of Burbank, California. We met Tony Beasley. He gave us full range of the Observatory. I asked him we were able to drive to the dishes. Tony said just don’t drive on the tracks and don’t climb on the dishes. When we asked Tony if he would come out and watch the re-entry he indicated that he would probably just watch it from his home. We then drove our trucks out to the six thirty four foot dishes that are all linked by track. We then took our digital cameras out and walked around to get a feel for the area. We quickly learned that the dishes would move to different locations in the sky so we had to come up with different locations depending on which way the dishes were pointing. We then headed to 130-foot dish, which was about 100 yards from the 6 dishes.
We then shot some digital pictures of different angles of the dish and the shuttle track. At one point we talked about me staying at this location and triggering two cameras and Gene staying at the original location. We went back to the six dishes. I told Gene that I would like to stay there until it got dark and see the North Star because the shuttle was going to pass just under it. We then started taking photographs with Gene’s digital with different settings. We tried strobe to light up the dishes with different exposure times. We were pretty satisfied with which exposure we wanted to use. The big question was which way were the dishes going to be pointing in the morning. After 2 ½ hours we had the location we wanted to set up at. We decided to stop by the control room to see if there was anyone available who could tell us which way the dishes would be pointed. Someone was able to tell us that the dishes would be pointed to the left sky. At this time we knew exactly where we would set up the cameras. I went with two films and one digital camera for me. Gene used two digital and one film camera.
We returned to our hotel. We spent the evening preparing the gear for the shoot loading film checking lenses etc. Gene knocked his camera off the table and his best lens broke off the mount. He was more worried about the camera, which was fine, but the lens was lost. He now only had a 75mm lens for his other digital camera. We called it a night and set the alarm for 4:00a.m.
February 1, 2003 arrived. We rose at 4:00a.m. I immediately exited the hotel to check the sky for clarity. The skies were clear. Thank god – we were over our first hurdle. We then logged on to SpaceFlightNow.com to get the latest landing information. To my surprise they were working foggy conditions and high altitude winds. I became concerned that the shuttle would not land on the first opportunity. NASA had not made the decision to land when we had to head out to the location. I kept calling NASA audio for the most current information. At about 5:05a.m. Just as we arrived at the dishes NASA gave the go ahead for the deorbit burn. Which means the shuttle was in fact going to land. I called Gene on our radios and told him the great news. All the worrying if this was going to happen was almost over.
We arrived at the dishes and immediately began setting up the cameras on the tripods. First thing we noticed was it was cold with temperatures in the high twenties. I decided to go with a wide-angle 16mm-35mm film Canon A2 camera pointed to the north over the dishes. My other film camera was going to take a tighter shot, but I had not decided type of shot I wanted. Gene suggested I set up my digital camera vertical with the 3 dishes in the foreground, in an attempt to get a “cover shot.” One reason to use the digital for that is because the digital cameras start to pick up speckles in long exposures at night. Being this was a vertical the exposure would be pretty short. I set my other film camera a Minolta 9 with a 28mm-135mm and was thinking about getting the shuttle coming at us from the west. It was now about 5:35a.m. and I had all the cameras basically ready to go. I then got the remote cords for the A2 and digital hooked up and tested. I went back to the truck for the Minolta remote cord and I couldn’t find it. It turned out it was still in my carry on luggage from the trip to Florida! Well that was a problem with three cameras to worry about. I thought I could either trigger it and hold the release button down or set the exposure for 10-30 seconds.
I rechecked the cameras and noticed the battery in the A-2 and Minolta started going low. I went back to the truck and camera bag I checked for a new battery and again no new batteries because I took them out and put them in my carry on luggage for Florida. I new my flashlight had the same kind of batteries so I took them out and put them in the camera and they also showed low! I put the old ones back in and they showed a little better just from warming up a little in my pocket. I was thinking I would use this camera only if I had the time to use it without screwing up to other two cameras. I then checked the Canon A-2 and had a hard time focusing on the stars. I remembered that the fish-eye lens I used a long time you just put the focus on infinity. I asked Gene and he said just put the focus on infinity. Well it turned out that set on infinity everything is slightly out of focus. I should have checked it in the daylight when you can see sharpness easier.
But I was more concerned with the battery in this camera now it was showing low voltage! The camera battery is in the bottom of the camera where it is mounted to the tripod. Gene was calling off the time and it was now about 5:45a.m. and I thought no way was I going to take the camera off the tripod plus I had no new batteries in the truck but I did have some in my other cameras that I wasn’t using. But time was not on my side and I decided to leave the camera alone and hope for the best. Doing all this time my hands were becoming numb due to the cold. It is very hard and nearly impossible to work on cameras with gloves on. I then had to set the remote cord on the digital camera where I could grab it and trigger the camera. There no good place to hang it and know where the button is when it’s dark outside. I planned on holding the Canon A-2 remote cord in my hand ready to go and after it was locked open I would then go over to the digital camera and trigger that camera. If I had time I would try to get something from the Minolta.
There was one person I was planning on calling about 5:50a.m. in Sacramento and I grabbed my phone to call her but my finders were numb and I had a real problem just trying to enter the phone number. Right then Gene yelled out its 5:52a.m! I new the Shuttle was less then a minute away so I said to myself I can’t call and had to get the remote cord and get ready to start the exposure. Within seconds there was the Shuttle coming over the West horizon. I then yelled out to Gene “There it is”! At first it wasn’t coming that fast but as it got closer the speed picked up. Kind of like watching a train comes down the tracks towards you. It comes at you kind of slow but as it gets closer to you the speed increases until it blows right by you. Well that’s exactly what the shuttle was doing at 16,000mph and only 85 miles away at the closest point.
I new where I wanted to end the exposure and I just wanted to have the shutter open before the shuttle got into the view of the camera. I pressed the button on the remote cord but the button would not lock. I tried again and again. I could hear the motor drive winding the film each time I pressed the button. I guess my finger was so numb I could feel the button enough to hold it down and slide it forward to lock the shutter open. Just when I was getting worried I got it locked! I then dropped that cord and when to the digital camera and found the remote cord and got it locked open. I then got to look up at the shuttle for just a few seconds. I remember saying to myself how bright it was and how fast it was moving. I waited for it to get just to the right side of my frame and unlocked the button to stop the exposure. I then went to the Minolta camera and tried to just hold the button down on the camera without a remote cord but there was no way. I went back to the first camera and tried to fine the remote cord but had trouble in the dark. I looked over at the shuttle, which was now over in the northeast sky to see how close it was to the spot where I wanted to stop the exposure. I picked the dish on the right side as that point.
I still was fishing for the remote cord when it approached the dish so I decided to take my jacket and put it over the lens until I could get the remote cord and unlock the button. That seemed to work. Right after I released the button that’s when Gene said “whoa Bill did you see that? Something just came off the Shuttle”! I looked over at it but I didn’t see anything. Gene said it disappeared within a second or so. I really didn’t think anything of it because it was Gene’s first re-entry and the shuttle is very bright so going behind some clouds it can look like the shuttle gets dimmer or brighter. I just didn’t believe him at that time. I said to him “Are you sure”? He again said he saw something come off. We then checked our digital cameras to see if we got an image. We both did and were happy. We talked about how much brighter and faster then I thought it was going to be. I took several more photos of just the plasma trail that was left across the sky from the west horizon to the east horizon for about 4 minutes. I took about 15 frames at varying exposures of the trail with the film camera and one with the digital camera.
By now my fingers were hurting from the cold and I just wanted to get to the truck and warm them up. I actually put my fingers in the defroster slots to get them thawed out.
Gene came over and told me, “I don’t care what you think I know what I saw and I saw this like red flare drop down from the shuttle.” Well besides wondering if my fingers would ever stop hurting and new then that Gene did see something. I wanted to listen to the NASA audio over the phone but my phone was over my minutes so I didn’t want to call until about 5 minutes before landing. So at 6:10a.m. I called the audio line and within a few seconds I heard the commentator say “last contact with Columbia was over Texas”. I knew right then they lost Columbia and the Crew. I know from all the previous landings at KSC that at 6 minutes before landing the Shuttle should have been in voice, radar and visible sight of the Mila tracking station and long range-tracking camera. I turned to Gene and told him the “They lost the Shuttle, they lost the shuttle and the astronauts are dead!” At first he thought I was kidding just like I thought he didn’t see anything come off the shuttle. But the look on my face he said convinced him immediately. He then said I told you I saw something come off it. Of course I knew he did the second I heard the news. It took a few minutes for it to sink in. We still had to tear all the equipment and load it back in the truck. The sunrise was real beautiful and I just had to take a few shots of the big 130ft. dish with the foreground. I really wanted to drive around and shoot all the dishes but Gene said we should hurry and get the digital images onto the laptops so we could see if they showed anything unusual.
We finished up and drove back to the Control Room. We first were trying to find anyone inside to see if they had a TV set but no one was there. We found a conference room and setup the computer to load the images so we could get a good look at them. My image didn’t show much because of the vertical shot I was going for had a very short trail across it. Gene then got his loaded and saw what now is the #1 flash on the NASA ground chart at 5:54:34a.m. We then zoomed in on the trail and saw a definite change in the streak. We wondered what the film cameras captured. Gene said we have to find a TV set so we powered down and started packing the computers away when Tony Beasley pulled up. I was still inside the Control room when Gene met up with him and Tony said, “That was some light show”
And Gene said “yea right up to it got over Texas” Tony surprise said what? And Gene told him they lost the shuttle. I then came out and Tony was saying he saw something come off the shuttle. I asked him “in the East sky?” And he said yes and he also saw two objects come off in the west sky that maybe looked like tiles. He thought that was normal because they loose tiles all the time. I told him they don’t loose tiles like that on re-entry but they do damage tiles on every launch. It like when a jet looses an engine they don’t physically drop an engine off the wing they just loose the power in it.
I confirmed with him what Gene saw come off in the East sky. Gene asked him if there was a TV in the Control room and he said there is one in another building a little ways away. We headed to that building and watched the video shot over Texas.
The four-hour drive home was difficult with many friends calling asking if I knew what happened not even knowing that I had witnessed and photographed Columbia’s entry. A big surprise was the fact that major news organizations from TV networks to major newspapers and wire services around the country were calling and even waiting for us at my place of business, the photo lab and the Daily News. Still to this day Gene and I do not know how these folks found out about us because neither one of us called them.
The next day Sunday Feb. 2nd NASA called Gene and I requesting our photos and a report about what we saw and camera settings be sent immediately and within a couple of hours we sent them off. A little over a week later we both got a call from a NASA Flight Director about our photos and questions again about what we saw. They also were requesting the original negatives or copy negatives. We sent 4x5 copy negatives to them a few days later. We received another call about a week later from a NASA Senior Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory. She explained that they really need the original negatives to do some type of spectrum analyzing of the shuttle and plasma trail. She said they might be able to tell what was coming off the Shuttle when it came over Calif. If they had the original negatives. She also said we would also be contacted by the NASA Procurement Office about buying all of our photo equipment that we used that morning. To do a complete spectrum analyzing of the shuttle you would have to have the lens and the camera.
Mean while I talked to Gene and sending our original negatives and I sent mine in and Gene waited for some type of insurance if they lost or damaged his. He did get something in writing and sent his one film negative in the day after I sent mine in.
We were working on a price of the equipment for replacement, which was somewhat difficult because I had a Canon lens on my film camera that was owned by the Daily News. And the Lens I had on my Digital was a loaner from a Camera Store because my lens was getting repaired. Gene’s film camera and lens was also from the Daily News. So we had three different Invoices just for the camera equipment. And one Invoice for rental equipment because Gene needs cameras for his job and could not sent his equipment to them without having cameras for work.
With everything agreed too we sent our equipment to NASA on March 7th. In July 03 I called NASA to find out if there was any useful data obtained from the negatives and she informed me they were still working on them even though NASA’s Early Sightings Assessment Team Final Report was completed in June 03.
In September 03 I went with Aviation Week to the Johnson Space Center in Houston where much of the accident investigation was being conducted, and was able to talk to Paul Hill, who had headed the image analysis. He told me that they had received about 20-25 still or digital images but it was the videotapes that had proven most useful in determining when parts came off the shuttle, which was used to estimate where to look for the parts on the ground. It sounded like he was not aware that the spectral analysis was still being done and that probably enough other data survived the accident that it was not needed.
So in the end the pictures did not play a big role in the investigation, but Gene’s picture appears in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, mislabeled as being near the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico instead of the Owens Valley Radio Observatory. My vertical shot became the cover for Aviation Week on Feb. 10, and I think it is one of the most fitting and poignant images of this tragedy.
You can see my STS-107 Columbia launch photo's at this site: http://www.ktb.net/~billmeco/sts107.html