Spring 2003 Issue

Per Ardua Ad Astra: Through Adversity to the Stars

 By Tom Webb, WA9AFM

Kalpana “KC” Chawla, KD5ESI, and Laurel Clark, KC5ZSU, in training for their last mission on Columbia. (All photos courtesy NASA)

For most of us, our lives include several defining moments that contain such profound and intense events that the most insignificant details of our surroundings—the people we are with, the time, the date, etc.—are burned into our memory.

The first defining moment I can recall was the assassination of President Kennedy. I was just beginning to go up the northwest staircase of Edwardsville High School right after lunch. Mike Gent ran up to me and exclaimed, “Kennedy has been shot.” As I moved through life, other moments came and went—the Challenger explosion, the bombing of the Murrah Federal building, the F-5-class tornado which passed just 3 miles from my home in May 1999—and now, Columbia.

It was ironic that we lost Columbia just one week past the 17th anniversary of losing the Challenger shuttle. For me, it was almost the exact same time of the morning when I learned of these events, which was 8:45 AM. I turned on the TV in the bedroom to catch the weather, and I saw “Breaking News!” Having worked in the electronic media, I knew this wasn’t good. The “scroll” at the bottom of the screen said “communications have been lost with Columbia.” Immediately I went into a denial mode, thinking that if they reset a circuit breaker or two things would be fine. Then it was made clear: The communications loss was during re-entry. The video of debris arching across the sky silently told the horrible story.

Three of the Columbia crew members were amateur radio operators: David Brown, KC5ZTC; Laurel Clark, KC5ZSU; and Kalpana “KC” Chawla, KD5EDI. “KC” was very much involved with the SAREX/ARISS program as the astronaut liaison, until she was selected to begin training for STS-107. “KC” was the first Indian woman to fly in space. In her honor, a geostationary weather satellite recently launched by India was renamed “Kalpana-1.”

Columbia has played a central role in the promotion of science and space operations through amateur radio. The first amateur radio operation from a space craft (November 1983) and the first SAREX contact with a school (December 1990) were accomplished from Columbia.

In January 1967 three Apollo astronauts (White, Chaffe, and Grissom) were killed by a flash fire in a training accident. The Apollo fire was on the ground, not in flight; “accidents happen” was the thought that many had concerning that incident. While it didn’t make the loss of that group of astronauts any easier, it was not a space-related loss.

It would fall to Challenger to break down the illusion that somehow there was some sort of invincibility for our astronauts while they were in space. It was for this reason that the Challenger tragedy hit us really hard. It was the first of the fatalities in the American space program during actual flight. After that disaster we knew that we were not invincible.
After the Challenger problems were solved, we thought we had them licked. However, with the exploration of the unknown comes risk—high risk. The risk became personified on February 1, 2003, the date that for so many of us has become one of those defining moments.
 

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