Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Michael D. Leinbach, Launch Director of the space shuttle program at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, led the subsequent search and recovery operation. NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens of federal, state, and local agencies, assisted by hundreds of volunteers, conducted the largest ground search operation in US history across rural east Texas. The effort recovered nearly 40 percent of the shuttle and the remains of the crew. This account is organized in four parts: Parallel Confusion, Courage Compassion and Commitment, Picking Up the Pieces, and A Bittersweet Victory. It documents how NASA employees searched for lost colleagues while searchers faced immense physical, logistical, and emotional challenges. The recovery work was instrumental in determining what happened, allowing the shuttle program to return to flight and complete the International Space Station. The book features a foreword and epilogue by astronauts Robert Crippen and Eileen Collins, and is dedicated to the astronauts and recovery search persons who lost their lives.