"Incoming" is a section of this publication that will be dedicated to the occasional pieces of mail I feel would be appropriate to share with everyone. The following is such a case. It was sent as a general mailing to friends by Ed Campion, a long-time NASA Public Affairs Officer normally assigned to the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. But Ed has wide experience in NASA and is one of those who, when trouble comes, is asked to pack his bags and go to it. I feel that the pain he reveals in this letter speaks not only for the NASA community, but for us all.

Dear Friends -

I'm doing my best to catch up in person with folks but in the interest of getting info out to everyone quickly, I'm sending out this note.

To say the last month was intense would of course be a major understatement. Early on the morning Saturday, February 1st I was at home making a list about the various errands I needed to do that day and thinking about some possible photography subjects I might shoot over the weekend as part of a composition class I was about to start in Annapolis.

The Space Shuttle Columbia was scheduled to land at 9:15 a.m. and since my cable system doesn't carry NASA TV, I turned on CNN a little before 9 o'clock. There was a debate going on about possible war with Iraq and as it got closer and closer to 9:15 a.m. The further past 9 a.m. it went with no switch to their reporter at Kennedy Space Center, one started to wonder if CNN was going to take a pass on even covering the landing.

I was in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee when I heard the CNN anchor say "we're now going to go to Florida and the scheduled landing of the space shuttle." I set the coffee mug down and went in the living room. The first words I heard were like a sharp blow to the stomach. "There has been no communication with Space Shuttle Columbia for the last 15 minutes."

Just like the doctor who immediately knows all the details and consequences as soon as they hear the diagnosis, I knew something had gone horribly wrong. I knew there were three different communication paths to the orbiter, that on-board systems should have been talking to ground-based systems and that radar tracking should have been showing the location of Columbia. To hear that mission control was "out of communication" could only mean that an extremely serious problem has taken place during re-entry.

I immediately made a call to my boss telling him I believed a contingency had taken place. While making a second call to a NASA colleague my worst fears were realized when CNN reported that they had footage from a station in the Dallas area showing what appeared to be the shuttle breaking up high in the skies over Texas.

Less than 90 minutes later I was down at NASA Headquarters trying to help with press operations. In the early afternoon, I got a call from the PAO team at Johnson Space Center asking if I could be on a plane that evening to come down to JSC. By 7 p.m., Vasch was in a kennel, bags were packed and I was headed to Houston.

Within 48 hours, more than a thousand print and broadcast media types had arrived at JSC. I spent the first three days mostly working with White House representatives in preparing for the memorial service at Johnson Space Center that was held the Tuesday after the accident. After that, I spent the next two weeks just trying to help with the overwhelming amount of media inquiries.

Of course just when it looked like I could come back to Washington, the D.C. area got hit with two and a half feet of snow so my stay in Houston got extended a few more days. Late last week, I finally made it back, got my car dug out and Vasch out of the kennel.

When I got home, my early morning cup of coffee was still sitting where I had left if almost three weeks before.

So here it is another Saturday morning, the first of another month and I sit here in Casa Campion with coffee in hand as I type this note. Vasch is sacked out on the couch trying to catch up from lost sleep during the kennel visit.

In the very near future (likely tomorrow) I'll take my camera and go get some of the photos I had thought about on that previous Saturday morning.

And at some point in the future, after we have figured out the cause and done what needs to be done to improve hardware, software, procedures, etc., the Space Shuttle will fly again.

To watch a Space Shuttle launch is truly a spectacular sight. There is the technical achievement of something that big, that complex, flying off into space; but of equal or greater importance is the symbolic meaning. It represents our willingness to challenge ourselves..to do things that are bold..to seek out new scientific information which has the potential to improve the lives of everyone here on Earth. But mostly it represents our desire to explore. To do anything less would go against the human spirit.

Take care,

Eduardo