the orbiter's external fuel tank and hitting its left wing during blast off. But no one knew if there was damage. At that time NASA had no options for repair. The crew was on a science mission, nowhere near the International Space Station. They had no robotic arm to look at the wing, no way to repair the wing if they had damage, and it would take much too long to send up another space shuttle to rescue the crew.

It was agonizing for Rocha, who had begged the Mission Management Team to ask the Department of Defense to use whatever it had to take high resolution photos. He was turned down. In an exclusive interview with ABC News in 2003 he detailed how his requests were repeatedly denied.

"Iradio system. "Columbia, Houston, UHF comm. check," he repeated every 15 to 30 seconds, but with no response. In central Texas, thousands of people at that moment were observing the orbiter break up at Mach 18.3 and 207,000 feet.

A few minutes later is when Cain ordered the doors locked and the computer data saved.

The painful investigation in the year that followed determined foam was the physical cause of the accident. A piece of foam the size of a briefcase – weighing 1.67 pounds – slammed into Columbia's left wing during blast off, gouged a hole in the protective tiles, which left the shuttle vulnerable to the brutal temperatures of re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

But investigators soon found more than foam was to blame. For years foam had been