The MSU undergraduates who waited in Florida for the shuttle to return are (from left) Stephanie Barton, Ailyn Perez-Osorio, Laura Eaton and Kristine Hale.

Spectators were euphoric as they waited for the Columbia to return from space, according to Montana State University-Bozeman students and faculty who were in Florida among them.

High spirits turned into confusion, though, when the countdown clock reached zero and started climbing again and no one explained why they hadn't heard a sonic boom or seen the spacecraft. And no one told them why the dignitaries and astronaut's families were escorted away from the landing site or why the MSU team had to board their buses without seeing a landing.

Confusion finally turned into horror as people called friends and family on their cell phones and later tuned into CNN only to see the Columbia disintegrating in the blue skies over Texas, Stephanie Barton said after returning to Bozeman.

"People were shocked. We could see people just gasping and looking on in horror at the video of what had just happened," said Barton, a senior from Whitefish.

"I didn't believe anything was wrong," said Kristina Hale, a junior from the East Coast. When she turned on the television and didn't see a landing, "I honestly thought it was because of security measures; maybe they were going to land in California."

Hale finally heard a maid yelling that the Columbia was falling apart, but she wanted to believe it was just a satellite.

"It was just unbelievable," Hale said. "... I don't think I will ever forget it. It was terrible."

Kelli Buckingham-Meyer was alone in her room, watching NASA television, when the Columbia was supposed to land. NASA kept saying the same thing over and over that it had lost contact with the shuttle and had no further information. It wasn't until the other MSU researchers returned that she switched stations and learned about the tragedy.

"I was shocked," said the research specialist with MSU's Center for Biofilm Engineering. "I didn't want to believe that. I think that's part of the reason I hadn't changed the station. I didn't want to think anything bad had happened."

Barton and Hale were two out of four MSU undergraduate students who were in Florida for the Feb. 1 landing. Others were Ailyn Perez-Osorio from Billings and Laura Eaton of Sheridan, Wyo. Besides Buckingham-Meyer, MSU microbiologists there were Barry Pyle, Elinor Pulcini and Susan Broadaway.

The researchers were in Florida because they had designed an experiment that was flying on the shuttle and needed to retrieve their equipment and results. Since the tragedy, the scientists have done limited analysis of their ground samples, but all the results that would have come from the onboard samples were lost.

It was a minor setback compared to the death of seven astronauts, the students and faculty agreed.

"It's hard to be sad about what we were doing, even though it's very important to us," said Perez-Osorio. "When there are major losses like that, you put it in perspective."

Pyle had seen all seven astronauts at a 2001 crew training session in Holland and probably knew William McCool best. Pyle and McCool had talked together, and McCool ran MSU's experiments during the shuttle.

"That's why my focus has been on thinking of the crew and their families and their friends rather than our experiment," Pyle commented.

Eaton, who has been overwhelmed by thoughts of the astronauts' children, said any illusions she had of survivors disappeared when she learned that a helmet had been recovered.

"Up until then," she said, "I was still hoping that an astronaut would walk out of the brush somewhere, that somebody would make it through."

Tim Ford, head of the microbiology department at MSU, said, "However tragic this event has been, the NASA research at MSU will continue."

Posted by Evelyn Boswell for 2/7/03