Hemphill Tx. Location for one of the most important finds in the debris field. The Flight Data Recorder.
Overlay of East Texas Debris Field.
Nacogdoches Country. Reported Debris
The Search for the Flight Data Recorder
At 9:05 on February 1, 2003, – Residents of north central Texas reported a loud boom, a small concussion wave, smoke trails and debris in the clear skies above the counties southeast of Dallas. Traveling at Mach 19.5; altitude: 209,800 feet (64 km). Space Shuttle Columbia was beginning to breaking up into thousands of pieces. These pieces formed at long, narrow corridor across East Texas that became known as the Debris Field. The job of the investigators was to collect as much as possible of the doomed shuttle, in particular they wanted to find the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). This would give them the telemetry to in those vital few minutes before Columbia broke up. But could they find it? It was a mammoth task and akin to looking for a needle in a haystack.
Unlike an airline Flight Data recorders , Columbia's FDR was not reinforced to withstand an impact. This led investigation team to be pessimistic that the box could survive a 64 miles plunge followed by hard landing. Having already searched a long debris corridor , 50 miles long & 3 miles wide & not found the FDR, they now decided to take a detailed look at the debris scatter pattern. .
Where would an object of that size and weight most likely land? The answer came back ---Hemphill TX. A team was now sent back to search the area again. Finding the FDR was of crucial importance to the investigators, without the FDR, the team would have no hard data and may never get to root cause of the accident.
Debris field --02-02-2003
The lucky break came in the 3rd week of the renewed search, Just outside Hemphill TX, a search team member found the FDR lying intact in open ground. Better still, the crucial magnetic tape still in a usable condition. Now the investigation had the hard data it needed to find out what really happened to Space Shuttle Columbia.
This NatGeo film ( Columbia s last flight ) traces the events leading up to the break up of Columbia, the search for the FDR and the investigation findings.
Columbia at approximately 0857. Debris is visible coming off from the left wing (bottom).
Screenshot:- NG impression of Columbia's re-entry & start of left wing disintegration
Columbia debris (in red, orange, and yellow) detected by National Weather Service radar over Texas and Louisiana.
Close-up of the Left Bipod Foam Ramp that broke off and damaged the Shuttle wing.
Screenshot from NG film. Reconstruction of foam impact on Panel 8,on Columbia's left wing. The foam impacting at 500km/p/h punched a hole 25cm wide allowing super-heated ionized gases to ingress
Crew Clark, Ramon The crew of STS-107. Husband (Cmdr), McCool, Brown, Chawla, Anderson,
* Commander: Rick D. Husband, a US Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer, who piloted a previous shuttle during the first docking with the International Space Station (STS-96). * Pilot: William C. McCool, a US Navy commander * Mission Specialist: David M. Brown, a US Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon. Brown worked on a number of scientific experiments. * Mission Specialist: Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer on her second space mission. * Payload Commander: Michael P. Anderson, a US Air Force lieutenant colonel and physicist who was in charge of the science mission. * Payload Specialist: Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut. * Mission Specialist: Laurel Clark, a US Navy captain and flight surgeon. Clark worked on a number of biological experiments.
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