Bringing Columbia Home

October 30, 2017
In this fast-paced and affecting account, Leinbach, NASA’s last shuttle-launch director, and Ward, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s solar-system ambassador, expertly relate “the largest land search-and-recovery operation in United States history.” The space shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry in February 2003 due to an undetected and unlikely breach in the leading edge of the left wing, and wreckage rained down along a 250-mile path across Texas and Louisiana. The authors intimately reconstruct the tragic disaster through spare but necessarily jargon-heavy prose and extensive interviews. It’s a moving and sometimes uncomfortably close account; they relate, for example, how the heat shield disintegrated and dusted roads “with something that looked like fine snow,” as well as details about the crew’s last moments. A team of 25,000 people searched an area “roughly the size of Rhode Island,” recovering 84,000 pieces of debris—many of them nickel size—and all seven astronauts’ remains. The unadorned, multisensory narration richly depicts the emotions and everyday acts of heroism of all involved. Keen’s sketches of the recovery’s dizzying logistics and the science describing the shuttle’s crash and reconstruction allow readers to experience what every volunteer interviewed said “was a singular defining moment” in their lives. Illus.