![]() She needed help answering the phones that rang constantly. Flowers and stuffed animals were placed at her front door, and mail began arriving in buckets. Cars pulled over and people got out, removing their hats and placing hands over their hearts. They took him to drink away the feelings - as was done in the Navy, where he’d met his wife at dive school.Įvelyn Husband Thompson had a police escort take her home. NASA friends and colleagues met Jon, who was a NASA flight surgeon, at the airport. Because, you know, as the vehicle broke apart they freefell into East Texas. “He goes, ‘I felt Mom,'” Jon Clark recalled. Jon Clark played cards with his son Iain, hoping to soothe the 8-year-old, whose demeanor changed abruptly as they flew over East Texas. The astronauts’ families were loaded onto NASA planes and flown back to Houston. “The most somber cry you could ever imagine. “There was a lot of wailing,” Jon Clark said. The families were taken back to crew quarters and given the news: There would be no shuttle landing. The countdown clock was approaching zero when NASA cell phones began ringing in the bleachers. Jon Clark, the husband of Laurel Blair Salton Clark, heard the worrisome calls from Mission Control blaring over the loudspeaker. Scott Applewhite) Original Filename: SHUTTLE_FUNERAL_JSA104.jpg 1, 2003 minutes before it was to land in Florida. Clark and six fellow astronauts perished aboard the space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated over Texas on Feb. Jonathan Clark, left, widower of space shuttle Columbia astronaut Laurel Clark, puts his hand around their son Iain, 8, during a graveside funeral service with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 10, 2003. Mission Control lost communication with the shuttle just before 9 a.m.ĭr. Air likely hotter than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit penetrated the damaged left wing and melted the aluminum structure. The shuttle continued flying over Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Evelyn Husband Thompson took a photo with her children in front of the countdown clock. JP Harrison, Kalpana Chawla’s husband, forgot his entry pass and had sweet-talked security guards to gain access. In Florida, the bleachers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center were packed with excited spouses and children. ![]() “It was just like watching your kid score a goal playing soccer,” said his father Barry McCool, a professor emeritus at Texas Tech University, “making that final basketball shot that wins the game. Its path flew over California and Nevada, where the parents of William McCool, a Navy commander and long-distance runner, stepped outside their Las Vegas home. The shuttle reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. (AP Photo/APTN) Original Filename: SHUTTLE_PHOTO_NY38.jpg Two Dutch military pilots training on an Apache helicopter at Fort Hood, Texas, shot video of the shuttle breaking up en route to its scheduled landing on Feb. “That was the last time I ever talked to him.”Ĭontrails from the space shuttle Columbia are seen in this image from video taken from an army helicopter and released by the U.S. “The very first thing he said to me was, ‘Happy dating anniversary,'” she recalled. As students at Texas Tech University, Rick proclaimed he would be an astronaut because playing for the Dallas Cowboys felt unrealistic. 28 - the anniversary of their first date. They performed front flips and ate floating M&Ms during video calls with family.Įvelyn Husband Thompson, the wife of Rick Husband (she married Bill Thompson in 2008), recalled a video call on Jan. So the crew members proceeded with their science experiments, and they played in microgravity. But without cameras to see the wing - and a general acceptance that foam often fell off during launches and nothing bad happened - NASA’s top decision makers didn’t recognize the severity of the damage. This would prove catastrophic 16 days later. About 80 seconds into the launch, a large piece of insulating foam fell off the external tank and struck the shuttle’s left wing. The solid rocket boosters ignited at 10:39 a.m. It was the 28th flight for this shuttle - and the 113th shuttle mission overall. Scott Applewhite) Original Filename: SHUTTLE_FUNERAL_JSA102.jpgĬolumbia’s final mission, STS-107, launched on Jan. The flag-draped casket of space shuttle Columbia astronaut Laurel Clark is carried by an honor guard past the memorial to the space shuttle Challenger crew during her funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 10, 2003.
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