Remembering Columbia: Tyler doctor who took historic disaster photo reflects on its 20th anniversary
“When you’re a full-time cardiologist, this is not really the first, you know, on the list of things that you expect to happen,” Lieberman said.
TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - This week marks two decades since the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, where seven crew members were killed. Twenty years later, we remember Columbia and a famous photo of one of the most devastating events in East Texas history, taken by a doctor from Tyler.
The doctor behind the lens is Dr. Scott M. Lieberman, MD, FACC, interventional cardiologist of Cardiastream and freelance journalist for the AP.
On February 1, 2003, Lieberman was on call at work and planned to watch the Space Shuttle Columbia from his backyard with his wife and his camera.
“I’ve always been a fan of the space program. I’m a science geek, in that perspective,” Lieberman said.
It was just minutes from landing in Florida, when it broke apart over East Texas.
“Looking through the still camera, all I could really see was a bright light and a couple parallel contrails,” Lieberman said.
But then he knew.
“When the sonic boom came in instead of a sharp pair of thuds, it was really a giant envelope of noise that lasted some period of time. And that was about four or five minutes after we had taken the pictures, it took that long for the sound to reach here. I pretty quickly went and looked at the photographs a little more closely, and could see that there were actually multiple fragmentation, basically the vehicle was ripping itself apart.”
Frozen foam struck the leading edge of the wing on launch. On reentry, superhot gas in the atmosphere entered the hole and caused the spacecraft to break apart, killing the seven astronauts.
“These people, who are heroes to me, risked their lives knowingly in the pursuit of this scientific and human endeavor.”
Dr. Lieberman caught it on camera.
“Very quickly those pictures became disseminated around the world,” Lieberman said. “The next 24 hours, it appeared on roughly 1,400 newspapers internationally.”
“When you’re a full-time cardiologist, this is not really the first, you know, on the list of things that you expect to happen,” Lieberman said.
When he looks at the photograph now, 20 years later, he says, “Pictures are worth a thousand words, and I think the picture says an awful lot about what happened and why it was important.”
Lieberman said many people have different reactions to the same photograph.
“It’s an incredibly blue sky, this bright shining object, that’s basically ripping itself apart. I mean it’s just, it’s a terrible event, and I mean it’s just a very pretty, beautiful image, of a terrifying horrible event.”
The photograph has been used in encyclopedias and history books.
“This picture serves to help people remember that it happened. That we have such people as these astronauts that are willing to do these kinds of activities and still continue to do so for the purposes of advancing science and technology for which we all benefit from,” Lieberman said.
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