There are things that happened on this mission that the press really latched on to: the gap filler sticking out, the fact that we had great video of the belly of the shuttle and saw the little pieces flying off.
The official said that while the president was receiving his usual intelligence briefing, Card was watching NASA Television, awaiting the shuttle landing, when he saw that NASA had lost contact with Columbia.
An eventful Tuesday saw Nasa order the shuttle back to its hangar to protect it from an approaching storm and then reverse the decision just hours later.