#Crew of endeavour space shuttle software#
#Crew of endeavour space shuttle windows#

NASA's mission management team was criticized for dismissing the foam strike based on what turned out to be a flawed engineering analysis. The Columbia disaster, like Challenger before it, triggered agency-wide soul-searching as the accident investigation proceeded. The wing eventually either folded over or broke away from the fuselage, throwing the ship out of control. The impact blasted a hole in the mockup's leading edge, conclusively proving the lightweight insulation could cause catastrophic damage in a worst-case scenario.Īnd that's exactly what happened to Columbia.ĭuring re-entry, super-heated air rushed through a breach in the left wing leading edge, cutting through sensor wiring, melting internal spars and burning into the left landing gear wheel well. In a dramatic test, engineers used an air cannon to fire a piece of external tank foam at a wing leading edge mockup at the same angle and velocity as the one that damaged Columbia. Over the days, weeks and months that followed, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board uncovered a now-familiar history of external tank foam insulation problems, management miscues and poor internal communications that contributed to the mishap. It would take another two-and-a-half minutes or so for the harsh reality of Columbia's demise to reach the Kennedy Space Center where family members, NASA managers, the ground support team, reporters and photographers were standing by for the shuttle's homecoming. Columbia broke up over Texas during re-entry on February 1, 2003, killing all on board. Anderson, all mission specialists and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist representing the Israeli Space Agency. Husband, mission commander Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist and William C.

The crew of Space Shuttle Columbia's mission STS-107.

All seven astronauts, unconscious moments after the crew cabin lost pressure, were killed by blunt force trauma when the cabin came apart in the hypersonic airflow. It was 8:59:32 a.m.Īs engineers would later learn, Columbia veered out of control in the seconds that followed and broke apart 38 miles above central Texas while traveling at 18 times the speed of sound. But again, the transmission was interrupted. 'And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last,' astronaut Charles Hobaugh called up from Houston. Husband called down to mission control, presumably to ask about the tire pressure, but his transmission was cut off. 5 minutes and 45 seconds after that initial reading was stored in the data recorder - the first indication of trouble showed up in telemetry reaching flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston: a loss of temperature readings from hydraulic lines in Columbia's left wing.įour minutes later, Columbia's backup flight computer displayed a message in the cockpit indicating a loss of left main landing gear tire pressure readings.

#Crew of endeavour space shuttle windows#

Using a hand-held video camera, astronaut Laurel Clark recorded the pink glow out Columbia's cockpit windows as the shuttle began encountering the heat of re-entry high above the Pacific Ocean. In any case, commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, David Brown and Israeli guest astronaut Ilan Ramon were unaware of any problems as they returned to Earth, marveling at the pink glow out the cockpit windows as atmospheric friction built up in the moments before that first unusual sensor reading. Senior managers ruled out asking for spy satellite imagery that might, or might not, have allowed a more thorough analysis.

#Crew of endeavour space shuttle software#

Three frames from a NASA tracking camera show foam separating from the shuttle Columbia's external tank (left), tumbling toward the left wing just under the orbiter's nose (center) and then emerging from under the wing as a cloud of debris.Įngineers could not determine exactly where the foam had hit, and Columbia was not equipped with a robot arm to enable an inspection in space.īut an engineering analysis based on software modeling for much smaller impacts indicated the foam strike did not pose a 'safety of flight' issue. Later analysis would show the foam impacted the underside of the left wing at a relative velocity of more than 500 mph, instantly disintegrating. Tracking cameras showed the foam disappearing under the shuttle's left wing and emerging an instant later as a cloud of fine particles. But 16 days earlier, 81.7 seconds after liftoff, a briefcase-size chunk of lightweight foam insulation had broken away from Columbia's external tank as the spacecraft accelerated through 1,500 mph.