Space Shuttle Disaster: The Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster

On February 1, 2003, the Columbia space shuttle crashed reenter the earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. Then the disaster was the second fatal accident in the Space Shuttle program after Space Shuttle Challenger, which broke apart and killed seven-member crew seconds after liftoff in 1986. The Columbia mission was the second space shuttle disaster after Challenger, which saw a catastrophic failure during launch in 1986. Columbia disaster directly led to the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011.

Columbia was the first space shuttle to fly in space. The first flight took place in April 1981 and ire successfully completed 27 missions before the disaster. On its 28th flight, Columbia, on mission STS-107 left Earth for

What caused the space shuttle to crash was that a wing was damaged from debris. During the lunch of the space shuttle, Columbia’s 28th mission, a piece of foam broke off from the space shuttle eternal tank and suck to the left wing of the orbit. Pervious shuttle launches had seen damage from minor to major from foam shedding. But engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious. During the crews 16 days in space, however NASA investigated a foam strike that took place during launch. About 82 seconds after Columbia let the ground, a piece of foam fell from a bipod rap that was part of a structure that attached external tank to the shuttle. Twelve minutes later, when Columbia should have been approaching ta phone call saying the runway, a mission controller received “television network was showing video of a shuttle breaking up in the sky. Managers in NASA limited infestation. Reason being that the crew could not have fixed the problem fix had been confirmed. When reentry the earth the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the space craft to become unstable and break

The Pilot was McCool, a U.S Navy commander. Payload commander was Anderson, a U.S Air force lieutenant colonel, physicist, and a mission specialist who oversaw the science mission. Payload specialist Ramon a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut. Mission specialist Chawla, aerospace engineer who was on her second space mission. Mission specialist Brown was a Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon. Brown also worked on scientific experiments. Last but not least Mission specialist Clark a U.S Navy captain and flight surgeon. Clark worked on biological experiments. They performed around 80 experiments in life sciences, material sciences, fluid physics and other matters. The crew has received several tributes to their memory over the years. On Mars, the rover Spirit's landing site was ceremonially named Columbia Memorial Station. Also, seven asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter now bear the crew's names.

In 2015, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center opened the first NASA exhibit to display debris from both the Challenger and Columbia missions. Called "Forever Remembered," the permanent exhibit shows part of Challenger's fuselage, and window frames from Columbia. Personal artifacts from each of the 14 astronauts are also on display. The exhibit was created