It was 20 years ago this morning, at 8:59 AM, EST (5:59 AM, PST), that tragedy took place in the skies above Texas and Louisiana.
15 minutes away from touching down at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida to complete mission STS-107, Columbia fell short of its destination when the searing heat of re-entry penetrated the orbiter thanks to a hole in its left wing caused by a piece of foam that broke off of Columbia's external tank during its January 16 launch...and struck the wing's reinforced carbon–carbon panel less than a second later. The seven astronauts onboard didn't know what was about to befall them until it was too late.
Rest In Peace, Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon. As former President George W. Bush said in a nationally-televised speech to stunned Americans a few hours after the disaster:
NASA / Rick D. Husband
And indeed, our journey into space did go on. While President Bush announced in 2004 the eventual retirement of the space shuttle fleet, Columbia's sister ships Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour flew long enough to see that the core assembly of the International Space Station was completed in 2011, the Hubble Space Telescope enjoyed a visit by servicing astronauts one last time in 2009, and the baton would be passed to commercial companies like SpaceX, as well as NASA's next spaceship and super heavy-lift booster: the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and the Space Launch System rocket.
The Columbia's loss led to the end of the Space Shuttle Program, but it also resulted in something grander: Our return to the Moon and beyond.
From the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004 to Constellation in 2006, and to the now-fledgling Artemis Program, humanity's journey back to deep space is only just beginning...
And that is the true legacy of the STS-107 astronauts. Ad astra.
NASA
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