Jan 28
Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia
On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated during reentry at the end of mission STS-107, killing all seven crew members.
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Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia
On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated during reentry at the end of mission STS-107, killing all seven crew members.
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Ad Astra Per Aspera To the stars through hardships
"In the Orbiter Processing Facility, Columbia's engine no. 2 is seen at left after its removal from the orbiter. After small cracks were discovered on the LH2 Main Propulsion System (MPS) flow liners in two other orbiters, program managers decided to move forward with inspections on Columbia before clearing it for flight on STS-107. The heat shields were removed, and after removing the three main engines, inspections of the flow liners will follow. The July 19 launch of Columbia on STS-107 has been delayed a few weeks."
Date: June 28-29, 2002
NASA ID: KSC-02PD-1092, KSC-02PD-1101, KSC-02PD-1107, KSC-02PD-1108
A drought pulled back the water, and there it was. Somewhere under Lake Nacogdoches, sitting on the lakebed for years, was a 40-inch aluminum tank from Space Shuttle Columbia. Not discovered by investigators combing a debris field, not handed over by a farmer who found it in a field — just quietly revealed by falling water levels during a Texas drought, like the lake itself had been keeping a secret. This is how grief works sometimes. You think the searching is over. Authorities recovered somewhere between 38 and 40 percent of Columbia after the STS-107 accident in 2003, scouring a search area of roughly half a million acres stretching from eastern Texas into western Louisiana. That is an almost incomprehensible amount of ground to cover. People walked those pine forests and fields for months. And still, eight years later, a lake near Nacogdoches is quietly giving something back. The tank itself was part of Columbia's Power Reactant and Storage Distribution System — one of 18 cryogenic liquid storage tanks that flew on that mission. Round, aluminum, the size of something you could almost wrap your arms around. It had been in space. It had survived re-entry, at least partially. And then it had been in a Texas lake for the better part of a decade while the town above it went about its business. There's something specific about Nacogdoches that makes this land hard. It's deep East Texas — pine country, red dirt, the kind of place where the forest comes right up to the water. The debris didn't land somewhere flat and obvious. It came down in terrain that swallows things. That's why the search was measured in half-million-acre blocks. That's why a drought in 2011 could still turn something up. The recovered tank posed no hazard to people or the environment, which is one of those sentences that feels almost beside the point. The point is that Columbia keeps being found. That the wreckage of that February morning is still out there, still surfacing, still reminding East Texas communities that something extraordinary and terrible came down in their backyards. How many lakes still have a secret they haven't given back yet?
I want to live in the universe where STS-107 ended with Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz marching into mission control and killing everyone there then sending up Atlantis to get the astronauts
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Kalpana Chawla
(1962-2003)
Kalpana Chawla was an Indian-American astronaut and the first Indian-born woman to go to space. Chawla was born on March 17, 1962 in Karnal, Haryana, India. In 1982, she graduated with a bachelor of science degree from Punjab Engineering College. She moved to the United States in the same year, where she studied at the University of Texas, graduating with a master's degree in aerospace engineering in 1984. After earning a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in 1988, Chawla began working at NASA's Ames Research Center, "where she did computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research on vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) concepts." Chawla became a U.S. citizen in 1991, and, in 1993, she joined Overset Methods Inc. as Vice President and Research Scientist. In December of 1994, she was selected as a member of the 15th Group of Astronauts by NASA and began training in 1995. Upon completion of her training, Chawla was assigned as "crew representative to work technical issues for the Astronaut Office EVA/Robotics and Computer Branches." On November 19, 1997, Chawla entered space for the first time, becoming the first Indian-born woman to do so. She spent 16 days aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as part of STS-87. Chawla was selected as a crew member of STS-107 in 2000, her second flight. Space Shuttle Columbia launched on January 16, 2003 after a series of delays. Throughout the 16-day mission, the crew "performed nearly 80 experiments studying Earth and space science, advanced technology development, and astronaut health and safety." During the launch, a piece of foam insulation struck the port wing of the orbiter. Upon re-entry on February 1, "the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart." Chawla, along with her crew mates Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark, Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, and Ilan Ramon, died. Chawla posthumously received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.
Crew of STS-107
Sources
NASA, Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, The Astronauts Memorial Foundation
21 years ago today, the shuttle orbiter Columbia and all seven astronauts she carried disintegrated on reentry. They were roughly fifteen minutes from landing.
Sometimes I watch the mission control recordings of that morning. It's a reminder of what —of who— we've lost on our path to the stars. it's a reminder that things can go so wrong so quickly in spaceflight.
HOBAUGH: Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last. HUSBAND: Roger, uh—
The loss of Columbia was the nail in the proverbial coffin for the shuttle program. NASA kept the other three orbiters flying without incident until 2011, but... we were supposed to go further. The shuttles were meant to be the dawn of the new age of spaceflight. We were meant to keep new shuttles, better shuttles, flying higher and higher for thirty more years. We were meant to get back to the Moon by 2011, and Mars by now. And instead, the swans of the space age were grounded. We're making a halfhearted, direly underfunded push for the Moon only now.
CAIN: FDO, when you expecting tracking? JONES: One minute ago, Flight.
I hope all this waiting has been worth it. I hope the contractors that NASA has been forced to buy spacecraft from (instead doing everything in-house like they always have) did not cut corners. I hope we make up for lost time, and we get to touch the sky again without losing anyone else.
CAIN: GC, Flight. GC, Flight. FOSTER: Flight, GC— CAIN: Lock the doors. FOSTER: ...Copy.
Lock the doors. The most horrible sentence in spaceflight. It means no information leaves the building. It means the emergency protocols are kicking in. It means the mission is over because everyone died, and now all we can do is try to figure out what happened so that it doesn't happen ever again.
I hope I never hear that phrase spoken in my lifetime.
Thunder on, STS-107.