Everyone knows that flying into space is associated with a high risk to life. Another confirmation of this is the crash of the shuttle Columbia. But, unlike other similar incidents, a lot of mysterious understatements are associated with this tragic case. Let's figure out how the accident on the shuttle Columbia happened.
Shuttle Columbia History
Before covering the last flight of the shuttle Columbia, let's take a quick look at its history. This will allow us to learn more about the tragedy.
The space shuttle Columbia shuttle began to be built as part of the NASA program in 1975. The work was commissioned in 1979.
It is noteworthy that it was Columbia that was the first apparatus of the Space Shuttle program. This program provided for the use of a new mode of transport for space travel - space shuttles, the shape of which was very similar to the design of the aircraft. Unlike spaceships of an earlier generation, shuttles could make not one, but many flights into space. Prior to this, NASA scientists launched vehicles of a similar class as part of the Enterprise program, flying within the boundaries of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The shuttle Columbia is named after the ship that explored the shores of British Columbia at the end of the 18th century.
The shuttle launched in 1981. This was the first flight that the American spacecraft made in the last 6 years. In the NASA code classification, he was assigned the STS-1 number.
Each subsequent flight under the Space Shuttle program has been assigned the following number. The last flight of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, the 28th in a row, was numbered NASA serial number STS-107.
Shuttle Columbia Design
As mentioned above, the shuttle Columbia, however, like all spaceships of this type, had the shape of an airplane.
Colombia differed from the shuttles made later, with a heavier weight and lack of a docking module. Thus, the device could not dock with either the Mir station or the International Space Station.
The shuttle was launched into space using a solid rocket accelerator. In addition to the spacecraft itself and the two-rocket accelerator, the design included a very voluminous fuel tank, filled with liquid oxygen and hydrogen. The separation of the rocket accelerator occurs at an altitude of 45 km, and the fuel tank - at an altitude of 113 km.
The orbital rocket plane had a length of slightly more than 37 m, a wingspan of about 24 m, and a mass without payload of 68.5 tons.
Mission STS-107
The 2003 STS-107 expedition was the 113th flight under the US Space Shuttle program and the 28th flight of the Columbia shuttle.
The mission of this expedition was a complex of various observations of the Earth, as well as experiments on microgravity (Extended Duration Orbiter and Freestar). The shuttle Columbia (2003) had the SPACEHAB research module, which was an additional load. The module served so that during flights in space, astronauts in it could carry out various studies.
Crew
Now let's find out what the STS-107 crew was like. It consisted of seven people: five men and two women. Six of the crew were US citizens, one representing Israel.
American astronaut Richard Husband was a crew commander. At the time of the flight he was 45 years old. For Khasband, this was the second flight. His first space mission took place in 1999 as part of the STS-96 flight on the Discovery shuttle.
His compatriot, forty-one-year-old William McCool, served as co-pilot. He had extensive experience serving in the U.S. Navy. McCool was the youngest participant in the flight.
American astronaut David Brown was a flight specialist. The 46-year-old astronaut was the oldest among his compatriots participating in the flight. David Brown had a medical background and served as a physician. As for the previous astronaut, for David it was the first flight into space.
Forty-two-year-old American Indian woman Kalpan Chawla already had behind her the experience of flying into space. She participated in the expedition STS-87 in 1997, on the same shuttle Columbia, on which she was to die in 2003. By the way, the first Ukrainian cosmonaut Leonid Kadenyuk participated in the same expedition. Thus, Chawla became the first woman of Indian descent (although not a citizen of India) who made a space flight. In the expedition STS-107, she had the position of flight engineer.
For the forty-three-year-old American Michael Philip Anderson, it was also the second space flight. He took part in the STS-89 expedition in 1998 on the shuttle Endeavor together with the Russian Salizhan Sharipov. Anderson had an engineering degree and was a U.S. Air Force pilot, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the expedition STS-107, he was the commander of the payload, that is, he was responsible for research work.
Laurel Clark was the second of two women who took part in the STS-107 expedition. She was an American civilian, she was 40 years old. She was a medical doctor by training, but before that she had never participated in space expeditions. During the expedition she performed the duties of a specialist in zoology.
Israeli citizen Ilan Ramon was a specially invited foreign specialist by NASA. At the time of the flight, he was 48 years old, that is, he was the oldest crew member. Ramon was educated as a specialist in electronic and computer technology, and was also a pilot of the Israeli Air Force. This was his first space flight, in which he received the position of payload specialist, that is, together with Michael Anderson, he took part in scientific research. In addition, thanks to this flight, Ilan Ramon became the first Israeli astronaut.
Most crew members had children.
Start
The STS-107 expedition launched into space on January 16, 2003 from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, located in the US state of Florida. The launch pad number is 39-A.
During take-off, a piece of thermal insulation coating came off the shuttle. He struck the tiles of the thermal protective shell of the left wing of Columbia. But NASA experts did not consider this circumstance a serious incident, which could somehow change the flight plan or endanger the lives of crew members. But in the future, this episode was considered as one of the versions of the causes of the disaster.
Flight
As part of the flight, the team as a whole coped with all the tasks set, which included more than 80 different scientific experiments. The expedition lasted 15 days and 22 hours. This is the standard time for shuttle-class ships. During this time, Colombia made 255 orbits around the Earth with a total length of about 1,600,000 km. The flight took place around the Earth in an orbit 307 km high.
On February 1, 2003, after all the tasks were completed, the shuttle landing procedure began at the scheduled time.
Catastrophe
How did the crash of the shuttle Columbia happen?
At 8.10 a.m. EST, the Central Mission Control (MCC) allows the shuttle Columbia crew to begin the launch procedure for the spacecraft. Five minutes later, the engines of the orbital maneuvering system are launched, which should have provided the descent. Half an hour later, Columbia entered the dense layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.
At 8:48 a left-wing temperature sensor observes an abnormal increase in thermal performance for such descents. But for some reason, the data was not transferred to the MCC or displayed on the screens of the on-board computer. The only source from which we now know about a rise in temperature is the black box.
At 8:53, debris begins to fall off the shuttle. And only after a minute did the MCC sensors show an abnormal change in parameters. Periodically around the "Colombia" observers observed bright light flashes.
At 8:58 a heat-insulating tile fell off the ship. At 8:59, the last communication session with the shuttle commander ends. At 9:00, Colombia in the sky is falling apart. At 09:05 a shuttle debris fell to the ground in the US state of Texas.
Here is a short list of events culminating in the crash of the shuttle Columbia. In this tragedy, none of the crew members had a chance to survive.
After the disaster
After the crash, when in general terms it was already possible to assess the extent of what happened, on February 1, 2003 at 11:00 in the Space Center all the flags were omitted. Two and a half hours later there was an official announcement of the accident. The tragedy of the shuttle Columbia caused US President George W. Bush to appeal to the people at 13:05 the same day. He expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, and also paid tribute to the heroism of the crew.
Immediately after the crash, the search for the remains of the ship began. Officially, more than 500 people took part in them. The search was complicated by the fact that parts of the shuttle were scattered over a fairly large territory, covering the states of Texas, Louisiana, California, Arizona. In total, about 12,000 fragments were found. Including a device was discovered that replaces the black box.
The remains of the bodies of all crew members were found.
Investigation of the causes and conclusions
Several causes of the disaster were initially considered, but the possibility of a terrorist attack was immediately ruled out, since it was technically almost impossible to carry out. Although at one time the version was even circulated on the Internet that the shuttle crashed due to the introduction of a computer virus into the shuttle system. But this version did not withstand any criticism.
During the investigation, the investigation refused three versions previously included in the main ones. According to one of them, the crash occurred as a result of the “aging” of the shuttle design. According to another version, the cause of the accident was too steep and abrupt entry into the atmosphere of the shuttle. According to the third - the disaster occurred due to a failure of the braking system. But, as mentioned above, over time, for various reasons, these assumptions were abandoned.
Two main versions remain. According to one of them, the crash occurred due to damage to the thermal insulation coating, which happened when the shuttle started. According to the second, damage to the thermal coating occurred already in space due to a meteorite.
The final conclusion, which was read out in August 2003, stated that the catastrophe occurred due to the destruction of the left wing of the shuttle by the hot gases penetrating its cavity due to damage to the thermal insulation.
Effects
The main consequences of the tragedy were the greater attention paid by NASA employees to the problems of the safety of spacecraft and their crews. This thesis was especially detailed at the very end of 2008 in a special NASA report.
The crash of the shuttle Columbia, the crash of the shuttle Challenger in 1986, as well as numerous malfunctions during subsequent flights, forced NASA to roll out the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
Memory
At the same time, the memory of the hero astronauts who were members of the shuttle's crew lives to this day.
One of the Swiss rock bands in 2005 released a composition that was dedicated to this disaster. And two years before that, a member of the popular British band Deep Purple recorded a dedication composition, the rights to which he transferred to the relatives of the deceased astronauts.
Also in honor of the shuttle was named one of the supercomputers used by NASA - Columbia. One of the peaks of Kit Carson Mountain in Colorado was named Columbia Point.
Meaning disaster
The catastrophe of the Columbia shuttle was once a significant event in American society. It showed the unreliability of the shuttles and the entire flight system, which NASA used at that time.
This catastrophe was one of the reasons due to which the question of closing the Space Shuttle program was raised.