It’s one of those events where, years later, you still remember exactly where you were when you found out about it.
On February 1, 2003, 20 years ago today, frictional heat seeped through the space shuttle Columbia’s heat shield. It softened the structure of the left wing. The ferry tumbled as it re-entered the atmosphere and broke up at an altitude of more than 60 kilometers. The crew members were Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon. The latter was Israel’s first astronaut.
The fatal damage occurred at the start
They didn’t stand a chance of surviving. Their last few seconds must have been pure horror because they realized something was wrong. And they guessed, knew with certainty what.
On that morning over Texas, it was almost exactly 22 years ago, coincidentally on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s very first space flight, that a manned US space shuttle, Columbia, had launched and returned safely to Earth. Almost everything had gone well then.
Only parts of the heat shield were visibly damaged during takeoff. The damage was caused by foamed insulation material from a fuel tank that broke on takeoff. Even during the stay in space, NASA gave the all-clear. The damage is not dangerous. The two astronauts did indeed return safely.
Disaster with announcement
As far as is known today, several more flights with similar problems followed, including reentry into the atmosphere, in which the crews only narrowly avoided a catastrophe. Damage was found again 20 years ago. Engineers requested permission for a more detailed study while still in orbit. The bosses refused. As far as is known, they did this because they felt that nothing could have been done anyway.
135
missions with Space Shuttles have started in total.
A commission then came to a different conclusion: Although a repair in space would not have been very promising, the shuttle Atlantis, which is already being prepared for launch, would have had a few safety tests omitted rescue mission launch before the astronauts ran out of air to breathe.
The seven would have had the chance to be alive today. A successful rescue mission would then probably have become the most glorious act of NASA astronauts up to that point. Instead, as apparently several times before, they said “It’s gonna be okay”. February 1st, 2003 turned out to be one of the darkest days in space history.
To home page
