Today marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy of the colombia ferrythe last big accident carried out by the POTthat led to radical changes in the space exploration program.
After two weeks in orbit, on the morning of February 1, 2003, the seven crew members were just 16 minutes from landing when Mission Control at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida lost contact with them. A piece of foam dropped from the external tank during launch had torn a hole in the ship’s left wing, causing it to collapse. burst during readmission to Land.
The depressurization I’m done with life of astronauts in 40 seconds. Disintegrated, the remains of the Columbia were scattered in an area of hundreds of kilometers between Texas and Louisiana. The crew consisted of the commander rick husbandthe pilot William McCoolthe charge commander michael andersonpayload specialist Ilan Ramon (first Israeli astronaut) and mission specialists kalpana chawla (born in India), david brown Y Laurel SaltonClark.
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The investigation revealed that, once the incident with the piece of foam was known, some engineers had requested that satellite images of the shuttle be taken to explore the potential damagebut the POT rejected the requests. Scheduling problems can also lead to failures in preventive measures, since the main objective of the shuttle program was to build the International Space Station (ISS), and many at the agency have already shifted their efforts to the logistics of subsequent flights.
After the disaster, the construction of the ISS was suspended and the operations of the shuttles stopped for more than two years, until its cancellation definitive in 2011. In addition, technical and organizational changes were made, which included new inspections in orbit to determine the state of the thermal protection systemsand the design of rescue missions for when irreparable damage was found.
The Columbia accident is reminiscent of the other two great tragedies that NASA starred in: the death of the seven crew members of the Challenger shuttle just 73 seconds after takeoff in 1986, and that of the first American astronaut, ed whitenext to Gus Grisson Y Roger Chaffeeafter a fire on the launch pad of the Apollo 1 in 1967.
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