STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION
Twenty years in the past this Wednesday — on Feb. 1, 2003, at 8:48:39 a.m. EST — a sensor within the house shuttle Columbia’s left wing first recorded uncommon stress because the orbiter and its seven crew members headed again to Earth to shut out a profitable 16-day science mission.
Over the subsequent 12 minutes, an on-board information recorder would observe a cascade of alarming sensor readings and failures on the left aspect of the spacecraft that indicated a quickly escalating disaster because the blazing warmth of re-entry engulfed the ship.
Nevertheless it initially performed out behind the scenes within the ship’s flight computer systems, which waged an more and more determined wrestle to maintain Columbia on observe for a deliberate touchdown on the Kennedy House Heart in Florida the place family and friends had been ready.
And so, at 8:53:26 a.m., Columbia crossed the coast of California, proper on schedule, at an altitude of 44 miles whereas touring 23 instances the velocity of sound.
House fanatics throughout the western United States would seize dramatic video of Columbia’s daybreak descent, together with uncommon modifications within the shuttle’s white-hot plasma path together with flare-like factors of sunshine separating and falling away. Nobody knew on the time what, if something, the sunshine present would possibly imply.
However 16 days earlier, 81.7 seconds after liftoff, a briefcase-size chunk of light-weight foam insulation had damaged away from Columbia’s exterior tank because the spacecraft accelerated by 1,500 mph.
Monitoring cameras confirmed the froth disappearing underneath the shuttle’s left wing and rising an on the spot later as a cloud of high quality particles. Later evaluation would present the froth impacted the underside of the left wing at a relative velocity of greater than 500 mph, immediately disintegrating.
Engineers couldn’t decide precisely the place the froth had hit, and Columbia was not outfitted with a robotic arm to allow an inspection in house.
However an engineering evaluation based mostly on software program modeling for a lot smaller impacts indicated the froth strike didn’t pose a “security of flight” problem. Senior managers dominated out asking for spy satellite tv for pc imagery that may, or may not, have allowed a extra thorough evaluation.
In any case, commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, David Brown and Israeli visitor astronaut Ilan Ramon had been unaware of any issues as they returned to Earth, marveling on the pink glow out the cockpit home windows as atmospheric friction constructed up within the moments earlier than that first uncommon sensor studying.
Then, round 8:54:24 a.m. — 5 minutes and 45 seconds after that preliminary studying was saved within the information recorder — the primary indication of hassle confirmed up in telemetry reaching flight controllers on the Johnson House Heart in Houston: a lack of temperature readings from hydraulic traces in Columbia’s left wing.
4 minutes later, Columbia’s backup flight pc displayed a message within the cockpit indicating a lack of left foremost touchdown gear tire stress readings. Husband known as right down to mission management, presumably to ask concerning the tire stress, however his transmission was lower off.
“And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire stress messages and we didn’t copy your final,” astronaut Charles Hobaugh known as up from Houston.
“Roger, uh,” Husband started. However once more, the transmission was interrupted. It was 8:59:32 a.m.
As engineers would later study, Columbia veered uncontrolled within the seconds that adopted and broke aside 38 miles above central Texas whereas touring at 18 instances the velocity of sound. All seven astronauts, unconscious moments after the crew cabin misplaced stress, had been killed by blunt pressure trauma when the cabin got here aside within the hypersonic airflow.
It will take one other two-and-a-half minutes or so for the cruel actuality of Columbia’s demise to achieve the Kennedy House Heart the place members of the family, NASA managers, the bottom assist group, reporters and photographers had been standing by for the shuttle’s homecoming.
Over the times, weeks and months that adopted, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board uncovered a now-familiar historical past of exterior tank foam insulation issues, administration miscues and poor inner communications that contributed to the mishap.
In a dramatic check, engineers used an air cannon to fireplace a bit of exterior tank foam at a wing forefront mockup on the similar angle and velocity because the one which broken Columbia. The impression blasted a gap within the mockup’s forefront, conclusively proving the light-weight insulation might trigger catastrophic injury in a worst-case state of affairs.
And that’s precisely what occurred to Columbia.
Throughout re-entry, super-heated air rushed by a breach within the left wing forefront, slicing by sensor wiring, melting inner spars and burning into the left touchdown gear wheel nicely. The wing ultimately both folded over or broke away from the fuselage, throwing the ship uncontrolled.
The Columbia catastrophe, like Challenger earlier than it, triggered agency-wide soul-searching because the accident investigation proceeded.
NASA’s mission administration group was criticized for dismissing the froth strike based mostly on what turned out to be a flawed engineering evaluation. The shuttle was not outfitted with a robotic arm, instruments or supplies to restore main warmth protect injury, and the MMT by no means thought-about a high-risk emergency spacewalk to examine the injury web site.
Whereas a NASA research later confirmed a shuttle rescue mission was doable in principle, nobody believed the company would have launched one other crew with out first figuring out what had occurred to Columbia.
In brief, Columbia’s destiny was sealed 81.7 seconds after liftoff. The true downside, the accident board concluded, was NASA’s earlier failure to correctly cope with an ongoing downside: warmth protect particles hits from foam insulation coming off the exterior tank throughout ascent.
As was well-known, each shuttle flight included foam hits to the orbiter’s warmth protect though the company had a clear-cut rule in place forbidding particles strikes. The rule was by no means strictly enforced and NASA ultimately got here to take a look at foam shedding as an “acceptable danger.”
However concern concerning the foam ramped up in October 2002, simply two flights earlier than Columbia’s, when a bit of insulation the dimensions of a mailbox broke away from the shuttle Atlantis’ exterior tank seconds after liftoff. The particles slammed into insulation overlaying an attachment ring on the base of a solid-fuel booster leaving a crater 4 inches extensive and three inches deep.
It was a detailed name. The froth struck simply six inches away from a crucial electronics field used to relay instructions to the booster from the shuttle’s flight computer systems.
Engineers rapidly traced the lacking foam to one among two bi-pod ramps the place insulation was constructed up across the bases of two struts used to carry the nostril of the orbiter to the tank.
On October 31, 2002, NASA managers met on the Kennedy House Heart for a flight readiness assessment to debate the shuttle Endeavour’s deliberate launch on the subsequent house station meeting mission.
The froth loss throughout Atlantis’ launch earlier that October was simply one among a number of technical points on the desk and the chairman of the assembly, Invoice Readdy, a former shuttle commander serving as NASA’s affiliate administrator for house flight, cautioned everybody to be vigilant.
However in the course of the subsequent dialogue, tank managers and engineers argued that issues with Endeavour’s tank had been no kind of possible than with earlier tanks constructed the identical manner. There was no clear proof something was flawed with the subsequent tank within the sequence and whereas foam shedding was frequent, the lack of massive items was uncommon.
They couldn’t assure the upcoming flight could be free of serious foam particles, however the exterior tank group concluded Endeavour’s was “protected to fly with no new considerations (and no added danger).”
Regardless of what some considered as a considerably suspect “flight rationale,” the flight readiness assessment ended with formal clearance to launch. Endeavour’s flight didn’t endure any vital foam injury and when NASA managers met on January 9, 2003, for Columbia’s readiness assessment, foam shedding was not on the agenda.
Reviewing the Challenger catastrophe, sociologist Diane Vaughan known as this type of acceptance of a clearly identified downside the “normalization of deviance.”
In that context, then, the start of the top got here on Halloween 2002 when contributors in Endeavour’s flight readiness assessment agreed to maintain flying shuttles earlier than gaining a radical understanding of the bi-pod foam problem.
The impression of that call nonetheless reverberates throughout the house program.
Together with advisable technical and administration modifications, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board instructed NASA it should “conduct a car recertification on the materials, element, subsystem, and system ranges” if the company needed to fly the shuttle previous 2010, an enterprise that will have been enormously costly.
As a substitute, in January 2004 President George W. Bush instructed NASA to retire the shuttle fleet after finishing the Worldwide House Station. The thought was to unencumber cash for brand spanking new rockets and spacecraft wanted to construct Antarctica-style moon bases within the early 2020s.
Needing to maintain house station crew and cargo flights on observe after the shuttle’s retirement, NASA turned to non-public trade to develop for-profit freighters and house taxis to ship provides and to ferry astronauts to and from the lab complicated.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences (now Northrop Grumman) launched the primary business cargo ships in 2012 and 2013 respectively. SpaceX launched the primary astronauts on a Crew Dragon capsule in 2020, ending NASA’s post-shuttle reliance on Russia for fundamental crew transportation. Boeing is predicted to observe go well with later this yr with its Starliner capsule.
However President Bush’s moon program — Constellation — was by no means adequately funded and the Obama administration determined it was not sustainable. NASA was instructed to proceed improvement of the Constellation program’s Orion crew capsule and to construct a brand new rocket, which grew to become the House Launch System, for deep house exploration.
Then, in 2017, President Trump ordered NASA to speed up the stalled moon program. The ensuing Artemis program launched an unpiloted maiden flight late final yr utilizing an SLS rocket and Orion capsule. The company plans to ship 4 astronauts on an around-the-moon flight — Artemis 2 — in 2024, adopted by a moon touchdown within the 2025-26 timeframe.
However within the fast aftermath of the Columbia catastrophe, NASA’s path to the current was not even remotely possible. All that was identified was that seven extra women and men would have their names carved in a Kennedy House Heart memorial.
And there have been extra exhausting classes to re-learn.
“Day by day at NASA, we have now a chance, we have now an obligation, to hold the recollections of people who we misplaced and carry their desires onward and upward,” NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson instructed company staff final week.
“And the underside line is that this: communicate up. A query, even a easy query, is extra forgivable than a mistake that may end up in a tragedy. And every of us has a accountability to domesticate a piece surroundings the place each member of the NASA household feels empowered to voice doubt. Make your considerations heard.”
