* Astronomy

The space shuttle Columbia

'Crashes!'

Saturday, February 1, 2003

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida

Space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated in flames over Texas on Saturday minutes before it was to land in Florida. TV video showed what appeared to be falling debris.

NASA lost communication with space shuttle Columbia shortly before its scheduled landing on Saturday. It was unclear whether there were any other problems. Mission Control reported no communication with the shuttle after 9 a.m. EST.

The shuttle was carrying five Americans an Indian and Israeli astronaut, ,

Shuttle commander Rick D. Husband, pilot William C. McCool, payload commander Michael P. Anderson, mission specialists David M. Brown, Ilan Ramon and Laurel Clark and India's first woman astronaut, Kalpana Chawla.

Authorities had feared it would be a terrorist target. Fifteen minutes after the expected landing time, and with no word from the shuttle, NASA announced that search and rescue teams were being mobilized in Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

	As i watched

NASA's oldest shuttle, Columbia was inaugurated in flight on April 12, 1981, and had flown 27 times in space.

In 42 years of human space flight, NASA has never lost a space crew during landing or the ride back to orbit. In 1986, space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. Security had been tight for the 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut. The shuttle Columbia was captured by TV cameras as it flew over Dallas, Texas, on Saturday morning, on its way to a planned 9:16 a.m EST landing at the Kennedy Centre.

Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's January 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.

On launch day, a piece of insulating foam on the external fuel tank came off during liftoff and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle. NASA said as late as Friday that the damage to the thermal tiles was believed to be minor and posed no safety concern during the fiery decent through the atmosphere.
Science mission Columbia's crew completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit. They studied ant, bee and spider behaviour in weightlessness as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli cameras. The 13 lab rats on board -- part of a brain and heart study -- faced the guillotine following the flight so researchers could see up-close the effects of so much time in weightlessness. The insects and other animals had a brighter, longer future: the student experimenters were going to get them back and many of the youngsters planned to keep them, almost like pets. All of the scientific objectives were accomplished during the round-the-clock laboratory mission, and some of the work may be continued aboard the international space station, researchers said.
The only problem of note was a pair of malfunctioning dehumidifiers, which temporarily raised temperatures inside the laboratory to the low 80s, 10 degrees higher than desired.

Some of Columbia's crew members didn't want their time in space to end.

"Do we really have to come back?"

The Challenger explosion, which killed seven astronauts, was on Jan. 28, 1986.

	The crew on a training expedition

"The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on."

'Update'

Friday, February 14, 2003

Columbia 'puncture' theory examined

The Columbia space shuttle almost certainly suffered a devastating puncture which allowed hot air inside the left wing, US investigators say.

" A substantial hole in the wing... would not be at all surprising "

	Shuttle wing

'Substantial hole'

Officials are not sure where a breach may have opened in Columbia's skin - but Nasa spokesman James Hartsfield pointed to the leading edge or elsewhere on the left wing, the fuselage or the left landing gear door.

"Any of those could be potential causes for the temperature change we saw," he said.

"They do not, and have not pinpointed, any general location as to where that plasma flow would have to originate."

Moments before the shuttle broke up, Mission Control noticed an unusually high heat build-up in the shuttle's left wing, which could have indicated missing or damaged tiles.

But scientists say the loss of a tile could not have produced such an unusual temperature.

"I think there was a substantial hole in the wing...That would not be at all surprising. All the sensors in the wing failed or gave bad readings."

Landing gear theory

Nasa's investigators have dismissed suggestions that Columbia's left landing gear was improperly lowered as it raced through Earth's atmosphere.

	Shuttle memorial on Spirit rover

SHUTTLE BREAK-UP
Re-entered atmosphere at 12,500 mph (20,000 km/h) Disintegrated 40 miles (65 kilometres) above the Earth Debris scattered over Texas and Louisiana - reports now being checked of sightings in California and Arizona
They were responding to reports that a sensor had shown the gear was down just 26 seconds before Columbia's destruction.

Tyres are supposed to remain raised until the shuttle is about 200 feet (60 metres) over the runway and flying at 345 mph (555 km/h).

Experts believe that if Columbia's gear had been lowered at that speed, the heat and rushing air would have sheared off Columbia's tires and led quickly to the spacecraft's destruction.
But Nasa officials said on Thursday that two other sensors had shown the gear was still raised and they said that were confident that the unusual sensor reading quoted had been wrong.

The Final conclusion is that foam broke away from the left bipod ramp 81.7 seconds after liftoff and hit the underside of Columbia's left wing. The foam measured 21-27 inches long by 12-18 inches wide. Before the foam separated, the shuttle , and the foam , had a combined velocity of 1,568 mph (twice the speed of sound). Because of its low density, the foam rapidly decelerated once in the airstream, slowing by 550 mph. The foam didn't fall on to the leading edge of the left wing as much as the shuttle ran into it from below. The relative speed of the collision was more than 500 mph, delivering more than a ton of force.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that the foam impact was the cause of the accident; and that the impact had knocked a 6-10 inch hole in the lower half of the shuttle's left wing; and that super-heated plasma entered through that breach and destroyed the wing, and ultimately the orbiter.

	Listen: .to crew of STS-107 in training.
A metal-ring cardboard-bound notebook	that survived the fiery disintegration of space shuttle Columbia, a 38-mile fall to Earth and two months of exposure to rain and sun in a Texas field has been painstakingly restored by forensic scientists, yielding the flight diary and notes of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. The pages included a list of topics Ramon planned to talk about during broadcasts from space, and the carefully copied-down text of the Sabbath kiddush, the blessing for wine. All together, 18 pages handwritten in Hebrew were recovered: Four sheets held Ramon's diary during the flight; six were technical classroom notes that had been made before launch; and eight were personal notes, also written before liftoff. The diary, written in black ink and pencil, covers only the first six days of the 16-day mission.
Experiments on moss	grown aboard two space shuttle Columbia missions showed that the plants didn't behave as scientists expected them to in the near-absence of gravity. The common roof moss (Ceratodon purpureus) grew in striking clockwise spirals. Researchers expected random, unorganised growth, as seen with every other type of plant flown in space. "We don't know why moss grew non-randomly in space, but we found distinct spiral patterns." to read more
A bright flash	TIGER observed by the space shuttle Columbia crew over the Indian Ocean may be a new type of transient luminous event, like lightning sprites. The flash was observed less than two weeks before the shuttle was lost during its Earth re-entry. The Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red, or TIGER, event was recorded by a video camera in the near-infrared spectrum in the night time sky just south of Madagascar on 20 January 2003. Analysis of the video showed that the emission did not resemble any known class of luminous events, which typically appear in conjunction with thunderstorm activity. to read more