'NASA People at Work
 |  | Flying Again. Higher.
Even if the painstaking task of collecting the debris of Columbia and trying to understand what went wrong in order to fix it is for now the main focus, the motivation to do it is simple and overwhelming: Flying again, Higher. Here, Hal Issen, Technician with United Space Alliance, is trying to identify an aluminum piece of Columbia wing structure. |
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 | | Don't Mess with ''My'' Station
Designed for an international crew of seven, the International Space Station is limited to hosting three astronauts and cosmonauts at this time – pending financial decisions that will allow it to keep all of its promises, including Japanese and European modules with a full crew, that will make it a truly operational world-class international laboratory as planned. It is hoped that the Space Station will manage the financial challenges it is facing, for through it we can provide the next generation with a unique human and scientific tool – bringing from space to Earth peace, cooperation, science and knowledge.
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 | | Relics
Terribly tormented debris, from what used to be one of the 35mm cameras of the Columbia crew, made its way from East Texas to the Johnson Space Center Photo Laboratory for documentation and identification. With much care and emotion, Mark Sowa will take pictures of what is, for the whole NASA family, a relic. As amazing as it could be, a few rolls of film survived the disintegration of Columbia – the heat, the speed, the pressure, the crash, and then, on the ground, the mud and cold rain of a February in East Texas. Beyond the emotional aspect of these very precious documents, which make them private artifacts for the families, this makes these images some of the most extraordinary pictures ever, considering the catastrophic events they survived.
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 | | Stars and Pride
Launch of STS-106. There are seven astronauts and cosmonauts atop that little light on the column of smoke. A launch is a physical and an emotional experience that cannot be actually shared or explained. At this very moment, even cameras have tears in their eyes.
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 | | On Columbia Path
From all over the country, volunteers and firefighters came by the thousands to help in the recovery of Columbia debris. Among them, a lot of Native American forest firefighters came from as far as North Dakota. Here, a crew led by Dion Standish, from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara affiliated tribes of the Fort Berthold reservation, ND, arrives in Nacogdoches after a long journey. When Lewis and Clark had to stop on their way to the Pacific coast, they were sheltered by the Mandan along a creek during the winter. Due to a shrinking of over 7 million acres of the reservation, this historical place is no longer part of the Mandan territory. |
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 | | Brave Hearts
Searching for debris that is sometimes smaller than a business card, but that can be key for the investigation, crews accompanied by a NASA representative have been braving East Texas woods, bushes and swamps under all sorts of weather conditions since early February. From the freezing cold to the extreme heat, avoiding confrontation with snakes, mosquitoes and cattle, thousands of volunteers walked through 1,000,000 acres in 4 months and recovered 40 percent of Columbia’s dry weight, which was unexpected considering the conditions in which the accident occurred. |
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 | | Rehearsal
Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. This gigantic pool of wonderfully clear water – where mockups of the Shuttle and Space Station are used to train astronauts for extravehicular activities (EVAs) – is the exclusive domain of very skilled and dedicated divers. Here we can see the Shuttle cargo bay and the two back windows of the cockpit. Amazingly, training for space activities starts here 25 feet under the surface of water. |
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 | | Space Treasures
With time we have learned that in space nothing can replace human eyes. Geologist Pat Dickerson and geomorphologist Justin Wilkinson from NASA Earth Observation Laboratory discover with STS-98 crewmembers Mark Polansky and Bob Curbeam their remarkable pictures. |
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 | | Sleeping Duty
Once upon a time we went to the Moon…
One of the giant, unused, and actual Saturn V rockets, workhorse of the Apollo program, is fighting within the mist of our memories three decades after nine of its sister ships sent safely 24 men to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. More than being a glorious past icon, it is and should be a powerful reminder of NASA people’s amazing teamwork and unique capacity to turn daring dreams into rewarding reality on demand, today as well as 40 years ago. The long-lasting benefits on Earth of the space program are endless, and are largely and still unfairly unknown. “Sleeping Duty” – because in the real world, the Home of the Free has no choice but to be built in the Space of the Brave.
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 | | Caring for Earth
With human presence in space, NASA can provide the scientific community with a unique Earth observation documentation. These images, which are much different from any of those taken automatically by satellite, are key to allow a better understanding of interactions between human activities and natural environment and to help protect our small planet. |
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