Michael W. Michelsen, Jr Putting together the twisted puzzle pieces of what was once Columbia is ex- pected to help unravel why the space- craft and its occupants were destroyed. The ongoing search for strewn Columbia rubble has been aided by a bevy of high- tech tools. Assembling the Teams Days later, Lee Meeks was in San An- tonio, Texas, to attend a GIS conference. Meeks, the GIS sales manager for Leica, was meeting with a GS 50 users group. He heard an appeal by Stacy Lyle, a pro- fessor at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, about supplying some of his students with Leica equipment to help with the data collection. Lyle also needed people, both GIS and GPS professionals of all types, to help with what would soon be- W hen Columbia began its fa- tal dive to Earth, residents of the sleepy little city of Nacogdoches, Texas, had no idea they would be thrust into the whirlwind of a mega-disaster and then become the hub of worldwide attention. Shuttle engine parts, re-entry tiles, laptop computers, even a Columbia op- erating manual were among the debris that fell from the sky on February 1, 2003, peppering multiple counties. Quickly rallying to the catastrophe that early Saturday morning, teams of volunteers and professionals swung into action, zigzagging across wide areas of East Texas farmland, forest, brush and swamp in a saddened hunt for Columbia wreckage and the remains of the space plane’s seven-person crew. TRACKING A TRAGEDY Leica GPS technology assists in the high tech hunt for clues in the Columbia tragedy. come one of the most extensive search efforts in history. Meeks returned to his office and made some phone calls. Jeff Ryall, a technical sales representative of Cornerstone Mea- surement Solutions (Houston, Texas) and John Griffin, owner of John Griffin Sur- veyors (Dayton, Texas) responded enthu- siastically. By the following Thursday, February 6, Meeks was in a field near St. Augus- tine, Texas, to begin collecting data. “There were so many people in the area that there wasn’t a single hotel room available within 100 miles,” he comment- ed, “so I slept in an IHOP. The restaurant manager served as my alarm clock.” While preparing for their search ef- fort, project coordinators churned out a wide variety of map products to help Analysis and map as of 2-11-03, by Jeff Williams, Forest Resources Institute, Stephen F. Austin State University. DISPLAYED WITH PERMISSION • PROFESSIONAL SURVEYOR MAGAZINE • May 2003 • WWW.PROFSURV.COM • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Transcript
Michael W. Michelsen, Jr
Putting together the twisted puzzlepieces of what was once Columbia is ex-pected to help unravel why the space-craft and its occupants were destroyed.The ongoing search for strewn Columbiarubble has been aided by a bevy of high-tech tools.
Assembling the TeamsDays later, Lee Meeks was in San An-
tonio, Texas, to attend a GIS conference.Meeks, the GIS sales manager for Leica,was meeting with a GS 50 users group.He heard an appeal by Stacy Lyle, a pro-fessor at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi,about supplying some of his studentswith Leica equipment to help with thedata collection. Lyle also needed people,both GIS and GPS professionals of alltypes, to help with what would soon be-
When Columbia began its fa-tal dive to Earth, residentsof the sleepy little city of
Nacogdoches, Texas, had no idea theywould be thrust into the whirlwind of amega-disaster and then become the hubof worldwide attention.
Shuttle engine parts, re-entry tiles,laptop computers, even a Columbia op-erating manual were among the debristhat fell from the sky on February 1,2003, peppering multiple counties.
Quickly rallying to the catastrophethat early Saturday morning, teams ofvolunteers and professionals swung intoaction, zigzagging across wide areas ofEast Texas farmland, forest, brush andswamp in a saddened hunt for Columbiawreckage and the remains of the spaceplane’s seven-person crew.
TRACKING A TRAGEDYLeica GPS technology assists in the high tech hunt for clues in the Columbia tragedy.
come one of the most extensive searchefforts in history.
Meeks returned to his office and madesome phone calls. Jeff Ryall, a technicalsales representative of Cornerstone Mea-surement Solutions (Houston, Texas) andJohn Griffin, owner of John Griffin Sur-veyors (Dayton, Texas) responded enthu-siastically.
By the following Thursday, February6, Meeks was in a field near St. Augus-tine, Texas, to begin collecting data.“There were so many people in the areathat there wasn’t a single hotel roomavailable within 100 miles,” he comment-ed, “so I slept in an IHOP. The restaurantmanager served as my alarm clock.”
While preparing for their search ef-fort, project coordinators churned out awide variety of map products to help
Analysis and map as of 2-11-03, by Jeff Williams,
Forest Resources Institute,Stephen F. Austin State
University.
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groups searching for debris. Those prod-ucts required extensive use of remote-sensing satellite technology—France’sSPOT, NASA’s Landsat 7, Digital Globe’sQuick Bird, and Space Imaging’sIKONOS spacecraft—coupled to GIS thatwas provided in large part by ESRI’sARC/INFO GIS software and LeicaGeosystems Imagine software.
“All of those images were moved intothe field very quickly in order to help thesearch crews to navigate and best figureout where to look,” Meeks said. “Unfor-tunately, knowing very well what wewere looking for—wreckage as well ashuman remains—it all added a very eeriefeeling to our work. Being in that fieldwas one of the most surreal experiencesof my life,” commented Ryall.
John Griffin had recently completed aseries of surveys for International Paper,just south of the general search area, sohe knew the terrain, and he knew hecould handle the technical aspects of thejob. The following Friday evening, Feb-ruary 7, Griffin met with Ryall and Meeksto receive nearly a dozen SR 50 unitsloaned by the company for use in theproject. Griffin, along with a lion’s shareof his equipment, was soon headed forHemphill to begin the search in the for-
Lufkin, TX—March 21, 2003—Fifty days into the search for materials from the SpaceShuttle Columbia, federal officials are confident in their effort and determined to continue their work as long as is necessary.
Air, ground and water search operations remain focused on counties in East Texasintersected by the shuttle’s flight path. Investigators are also following up on information from the National Transportation Safety Board indicating the strongpossibility of debris sites in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico.
“We have more than 5,600 men and women working on the recovery,” said Federal Coordinating Officer Scott Wells, of the Federal Emergency ManagementAgency (FEMA). “They have recovered 51,600 pounds, or 23% by weight, of theshuttle. This is a tribute to their stamina, their ability, and their commitment.”
On a typical day in the field, a searcher will cover 2.7 to 4.1 acres depending uponthe terrain. This searcher may also encounter bad weather, ticks, snakes, dehydration, barbed wire, electrified fences, fire ants, feral hogs, armadillo holes,bulls, horses, cattle, bees, thorns and the like. The rewards for this effort rangefrom finding a significant piece of the shuttle to sharing in the knowledge that another team has found a piece or pieces that will contribute to the findings of theinvestigative team.
Air Operations: 174 personnel; 1,300,200 acres searched. More than 900 piecesof shuttle material retrieved. Assets: 31 helicopters, ten fixed-wing aircraft and aDC-3.
Water Operations: 151 personnel; 14.69 square nautical miles searched. 1,903targets cleared. Assets: dive boats, two autonomous underwater vehicles, twomulti-beam sonar scanners, and three side sonar scanners.
Ground Operations: 5,473 total personnel; 278,784 acres searched. More than30,250 sites cleared.
Cooperating in the search are:Federal agencies: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Federal Emer-gency Management Agency, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management,Bureau of Indian Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of De-fense, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Park Service, U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, United States Air Force,United States Army, U.S. Marine Corps, National Transportation Safety Board,U.S. Marshall, Department of the Interior, Department of Transportation, UrbanSearch and Rescue, Government Services Administration, National Weather Ser-vice and Tennessee Valley Authority.
State agencies: Texas Department of Public Safety; Texas Forest Service, TexasDivision of Emergency Management, Texas National Guard, Texas Alcoholic Bev-erage Commission, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Texas Engineering Ex-tension Service, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas Parks andWildlife, Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness and Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Local agencies: Sabine River Authority, City of Houston Police Department,Galveston County Dive Team, Palestine Helibase, Angelina County Airport andLongview Airport.
Other organizations: Civil Air Patrol, American Red Cross and Salvation Army.
(Source: www.fema.gov/diz03/e3171n54.shtm)
SEARCH RECORDS IMPRESSIVE NUMBERS
Laura Rivas, Survey Technician, and John Griffin, RPLS, prepare the GPS Rover.Photo by Jim Gillis.
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person in that line 15 feet from the next.Under the supervision of the U.S. ForestService, I saw one of the best coordinat-ed searches that I have ever seen.”
According to Griffin, each time a Co-lumbia-related artifact was found, hiscrew was called into action. “We prettymuch followed behind our search teamuntil something was found,” he said. “Wedidn’t find a lot of debris in our search,but the pieces were significant. Each time
something was found,we were called to takea position and collectnumerous attributedata. Regardless, withour units, accompa-nied by satellite andbeacon data, we weregetting excellent posi-tioning data under thetrees.”
A Snapshot of a Disaster
After a few daysspent collecting data,Meeks was asked tohelp allocate theavailable GPS re-sources to the searchteams. He was alsoresponsible for down-loading each GPS unitand preparing the da-ta for inclusion in theESRI ARC/INFO GISdatabase.
“Practically noth-ing hindered oursearch,” Meeks said.“I collected data overopen fields as well asin areas that were sothickly wooded that Iwouldn’t have gonehunting in those ar-eas. I’ve also beenchest-deep in swampsto collect data. Theonly thing that stop-ped us at the end ofthe day was darkness.Then it was time tostart downloading da-ta and making mapsfor the next day’s ef-forts.”
FEATURE
est, along with more than 250 othersearchers to begin their phase of thesearch.
“We were divided into teams of 25people, each containing team leaders,representatives of the Texas Highway Pa-trol, NASA, the FBI, and experiencedGPS data collection operators,” Griffinexplained. “Our team joined 10 otherteams to form a sweep through the for-est. Searchers formed a line with each
Ryall added, “Throughout our participa-tion in this project, we were download-ing data practically every chance we got.We are confident that by taking this data,seeing the pattern of what fell where,NASA researchers and other investigatorswill be able to extrapolate the data theyneed to determine how this happened.”
The Forensic Footprint“It didn’t take long—using the GPS—
before we were able to add one dot toanother until a pattern began to emergeas to the overall ‘forensic footprint’ of Co-lumbia emerged,” Ryall explained. “De-bris find reports began to vector outwardto other counties, then stretch all the wayto the Louisiana border,” Ryall said.
Eventually, the integration of GPS da-ta collected in the field with GIS mappingsoftware tools led to the creation of a va-riety of products useful to federal, stateand local authorities and search teams.
“We were collecting mountains of da-ta,” Meeks said. “Fortunately, with all ofthis data, it not only told us we were do-ing a thorough job, but after we printedmaps it also showed us where we need-ed to take another look.”
Debris RainTo date, much of the Columbia has
yet to be found. On February 22, NASAflew an ER-2 high-altitude research air-craft over Texas, tracking portions of thepath taken by the space shuttle as it dis-integrated. Similar to the U.S. Air ForceU-2 spy plane, the ER-2 soared over se-lect areas in a seven-hour trek. Imagingobtained during the flight is now beingstudied to determine if it can show thelocation of shuttle debris, but searchersadmit that these scans would only pro-vide part of the total picture.
(top) Field teams captured digital images of Columbia materialalong with GPS coordinates and a description of the piece. Shownhere: piece of an aluminum structure bracket. Photo: NASA
(below) Section from Columbia’s outer skin shows damage to theorbiter’s protective tiles. Courtesy Forest Resources Institute, Stephen F. AustinState University. Shuttle image at top of page courtesy NASA Johnson Space Center.
“. . . by taking this data,
seeing the pattern of what
fell where, NASA researchers
and other investigators will
be able to extrapolate the da-
ta they need to determine
how this happened.”
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“Eventually, these pictures willemerge that will show investigators intothis tragedy to determine what happenedand how,” Ryall said. “Hopefully, thatwill give them the knowledge they needto keep this kind of thing from ever hap-pening again in the future.”
Never to ForgetGriffin carefully chooses his words
when discussing his mission in the Shut-tle search effort. “I’ve done a lot of jobsover the years that I’m proud of. I’vedone jobs where I felt like I was makinga real contribution to a project, too. But Ican’t say I felt the same way about thisproject. I’m proud to have participated inthis project because as difficult as it was,considering the circumstances, I felt likeI was using a skill that I have to not on-ly provide answers to this tragedy, butperhaps even a sense of closure to some-one who lost a loved one. That’s a feel-ing that’s hard to describe. Besides allthat, I feel a lot like many Americans doright now in light of this terrible incident.It will be a long time before I get mymind around what happened here.”
MIKE MICHELSEN is a freelance writer whospecializes in business and technologysubjects. He lives in Riverside, Californiawith his wife and two daughters.
John Griffin, LS, and Jeff Ryall, BSc (Surveying Engineering), com-plete the Reference Station Antenna installation. Photo by Jim Gillis.
Rivas tracksa line, andchecks herposition.Photo by JimGillis.
“. . . the integrationof GPS data collect-ed in the field withGIS mapping soft-ware tools led tothe creation of a va-riety of productsuseful to federal,state and local au-thorities and searchteams.”
John Griffin’s office building,with choke ringantenna on top,Dayton, Texas. Photo by Jim Gillis.
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