Columbia disaster that scuttled the space shuttle

America could now be aiming to place astronauts again on the Moon, however for years the USA turned its again on manned missions after the Columbia space shuttle catastrophe.

Its space program suffered a catastrophic setback when all seven astronauts had been killed when the shuttle broke up on re-entering the Earth’s environment 20 years in the past on February 1, 2003.

It was the second shuttle catastrophe after the Challenger explosion of 1986 which additionally killed the crew and led to sharp criticism of the protection tradition at NASA.

The shuttle fleet was grounded for 2 and a half years and it sparked a significant shift in American space flights.

In 2004, president George W. Bush introduced that the eye-wateringly costly program could be retired.

For years after the final shuttle flight in 2011, NASA discovered itself depending on Russia for transport to the Worldwide House Station (ISS) till Elon Musk’s House X started flying passengers there in 2020.

In addition to the Moon, Washington is now making ready for a manned mission to Mars, scheduled tentatively for the late 2030s or early 2040s.

‘Trails of smoke’

Columbia broke up at 203,000 ft (61,900 meters) over jap Texas simply because the mission controller in Houston was speaking to Columbia commander Rick Husband.

“To Columbia, right here is Houston… we didn’t copy your final” message.

After a second, Husband replied: “Roger however…”

After a quick crackling noise, contact was misplaced.

Columbia disappeared from radar screens at 9:00 am (1400 GMT), 16 minutes earlier than it was attributable to land.

The flaming particles from the 80-ton craft was caught streaking throughout the sky over the southern US by native TV stations, with elements scattered over Texas and Louisiana.

Bob Molter from Palestine, Texas, informed Nationwide Public Radio how he noticed the shuttle break up within the sky.

“There was an enormous increase that shook the home for greater than a minute, and I went outdoors as a result of I believed there had been a practice accident on the close by line.

“However there was nothing, after which I appeared up and noticed the paths of smoke zig-zagging, going throughout the sky.”

Heroes

Columbia was the oldest shuttle to fly in orbit.

When it took off on its twenty eighth flight on January 16, 2003 for a 16-day mission to hold out experiments it had been in operation for over 20 years.

Flight STS-107 was launched below extraordinarily tight safety within the wake of the September 11, 2001 assaults and because of the presence on board of Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

Bush minimize quick a keep on the Camp David presidential retreat and raced again to Washington following the tragedy. In a televised tackle he hailed the crew, two of whom had been ladies, as heroes.

A probe revealed that the shuttle disintegrated attributable to harm attributable to a chunk of froth from the exterior gasoline tank that took a piece out of the orbiter’s left wing throughout liftoff.

This left it unable to resist the extreme temperatures generated by re-entry.

Finish of shuttle program

The shuttle program was born in 1972 below president Richard Nixon and went on to turn into the key focus of US human spaceflight ambitions over the subsequent 4 many years.

The fleet additionally acted like space vehicles, carrying greater than 1,500 tons of apparatus to assist construct the primary space telescope, Hubble, and the Worldwide House Station.

After the Columbia catastrophe, NASA underwent sweeping modifications geared toward enhancing its tradition and security.

The company resumed shuttle flights in July 2005, with Discovery, then Endeavour and at last Atlantis persevering with to fly missions to the ISS till 2011.

© 2023 AFP