The Columbia Report, Part 1

December 30, 2008

There’s a story breaking today, thanks to my friend and colleague Gina Sunseri at ABC News, about the Columbia accident, the space tragedy that happened on Feb. 1, 2003.

It is a report, literally years in the making, by a group of experts from NASA and outside sources who were asked to perform “a comprehensive analysis of the accident, focusing on factors and events affecting crew survival,” according to a draft release of the summary.

The full report will be released at noon, with a conference call for reporters to follow at 4.

It will be a sad note to end the year (assuming nothing is forthcoming from NASA tomorrow), with details about how much time the crew had available to grasp the reality of their situation.

“Clearly, the accident was not survivable under any circumstances,” said NASA spokesman David Mould, “but it will probably help for designing things for future spacecraft and maybe even aircraft.”

The timing of the report is peculiar, coming between the Christmas and New Years holidays.

Mould advised not reading too much into that, but later added, “The timing was coordinated to some degree with the families of the astronauts. We work with them to make sure things like timing was good for them. We want to be sensitive to those folks.”