There's not going to be a landing today

Remembering Columbia

By Texas Tech University

February 1^st, 2023

On a brilliant January morning in 2003, the space shuttle Columbia lifted off from Earth, carrying with it more than 80 scientific experiments, seven crew members and the dreams of children all over the world who wanted to be astronauts someday. It’s a dream shuttle commander Rick Husband knew well – he’d been working his entire life to become an astronaut. Now, on his second mission, he was in his prime – 45 years old, with a wife, Evelyn, and two beautiful children, Laura and Matthew, waiting for him back on the ground and an unshakeable faith that he shared with everyone around him.

"Everybody was extremely excited; it was the day they'd waited for," she says. " I had absolutely no forbidding that anything could go wrong; I was just super proud of him and excited that they were finally going to get to experience what they'd trained for, for so long."

Evelyn Husband

Rick Husband was born and raised in Amarillo and arrived at Texas Tech in 1975 to study mechanical engineering. He had known since childhood he wanted to be an astronaut, and he was set on making it happen... While he was a student, Rick wrote a letter to NASA from his dorm room, 612 Murdough, asking for information on becoming either an astronaut pilot or a mission specialist. ...He requested an application.

On that fateful day, Texas Tech alumna Ginger Kerrick Davis was at NASA headquarters in Houston. As a capsule communicator for the International Space Station, she wasn’t in charge of this mission, but she was monitoring just the same. These people were her friends. In fact, she sometimes gave Rick the “Guns Up” sign when they passed in the hallway.

On the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, International Space Station Commander Kenneth Bowersox radioed to Ginger. "Hey Gin, according to my watch, the shuttle should have landed by now. How are things going down there?"

"Hey Sox. Sorry crazy day up there, crazy day down here. Let me go check on that for you."

"Hey Sox, it's Ginger on private. I don't know how to say this but, there isn't going to be a landing today.'

"Oh, did they wave off? Was it bad weather?"

" Let me clarify. There's not going to be a landing today or any day. Something bad has happened..." "The shuttle apparently broke up somewhere over Texas."

Ginger offered to share the CNN feed with him. "Gin, I don't know that I am ready to see that. Can you just describe to me what you are seeing?'

She began reporting to him everything she saw TV and heard on the NASA communication loops. "They just found a piece of the fuselage on somebody's farm; I hear reports that they just found a helmet."

After 45 minutes Ginger told him they were coming up on a 5 minute communication blackout.

"Gin, thank you. Thank you for doing this. And I know it's hard, so when we come back up on the other side, feel free to pipe up the TV."

As soon as communication was severed, she got up to take a break.

"I walked into the restroom, and forgot why I was there... I was just remember standing over the sink, looking at myself in the mirror, trying to give myself permission to cry. And it came out, but I looked at my watch and I thought 'OK, I can only cry for about two minutes.'"