NASA
It was 20 years ago today that space shuttle Columbia lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on her final flight, STS-107.
What was supposed to be an almost 16-day lab mission before Columbia would finally be used in the assembly campaign for the then-fledgling International Space Station (unlike her sister ships Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, Columbia was initially too heavy to fly up to the ISS before modifications were made to NASA's oldest orbiter) turned out to be the second disaster in the Space Shuttle Program, behind the 1986 loss of Challenger.
Columbia's fate was sealed when a piece of foam broke off from her external fuel tank's left bipod 81.7 seconds after liftoff (which occurred at 10:39 AM, EST), and struck the reinforced carbon-carbon panel on the orbiter's portside wing 0.2 seconds later. Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas and the seven STS-107 astronauts themselves were unaware of this, and didn't know what would transpire over two weeks later...on February 1, 2003.
NASA
No comments:
Post a Comment