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    Total Failure: When The Space Shuttle Didn't Come Home

    In Part 1 of the series Total Failure, a former NASA official recalls the disastrous mission of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 and how the accident changed his life forever.
    by Geoff Brumfiel May 17, 2017 4 minutes
    Source: Isabel Seliger for NPR

    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

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