The morning that the space shuttle Columbia was supposed to return home, Wayne Hale was at the landing site. At age 48, Hale was an up-and-coming manager with NASA. He'd just taken a job overseeing shuttle launches. But since this was a landing day, he didn't have much to do. It was Feb. 1, 2003. He and other managers were hanging out in a grassy viewing area near the landing strip at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Families of the astronauts were there, too. Loudspeakers were playing communications between Columbia and mission control. "Really it was a kind of party atmosphere," he recalls. Hale was chatting to his friends, feeling relaxed. The astronauts were scheduled to land any minute. "And finally somebody, I can't remember who, said: 'Isn't it unusual for them to be out of contact for so long?" he says. The shuttle sometimes passed through a brief communications blackout during re-entry. But it never lasted more than a few minutes. Hale looked over at the large countdown clock
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