John's Crazy World Archives

The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on February 1, 2003, during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere on its 28th mission, STS-107. The entire seven-member crew died.

Now an image taken by an amateur astronomer from a hillside in San Francisco, showing a mysterious blue streak striking the shuttle, is making NASA reconsider an earlier theory: that the shuttle may have been struck by an unknown form of lightning.

The photo shows a bolt of lightning striking the shuttle. The astronomer, who is asking that his name not be used, took five photos of the shuttle at about 6 am. This was just about the time that sensors on the shuttle began indicating the first signs of trouble. Seven minutes later, the shuttle broke up over Texas.

The San Francisco Chronicle sent former shuttle astronaut Tammy Jernigan to the home of the amateur photographer to examine the pictures in person. He gave her the actual camera, an automatic Nikon 880, to take back with her to NASA. Jernigan, who no longer works for NASA, asked the photographer about the exposure and other settings the camera was on when the picture was taken. The camera had been mounted on a tripod, and the shutter was triggered manually.

Jernigan has a special interest in exploring what caused the Columbia tragedy. She flew five shuttle missions during the 1990s—three of them on Columbia. On her last flight, the pilot was Rick Husband, who was also at the controls when Columbia broke up.

The San Francisco photographer had been trying to reach NASA for three years, but had no success until he contacted a relative who attends the same church as astronaut Jack Lousma.

Could something as mundane as lightning have brought down the space shuttle, which is built at the upper limit of our technological expertise?