Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates on reentry
On this day · 1 February 2003
Sixteen minutes from home, Columbia broke apart over Texas, lost to a wound it had carried unseen since launch.
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry high over Texas, roughly 16 minutes before its scheduled landing in Florida. All seven astronauts aboard mission STS-107 were killed: commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, and crewmates Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space.
The fatal flaw had been set in motion at launch sixteen days earlier. A suitcase-sized chunk of insulating foam fell from the external tank and struck the leading edge of Columbia’s left wing, punching a hole in its heat shielding.
During reentry, superheated gases poured into that breach and ate through the wing from the inside.
The later investigation faulted not only the foam but a NASA culture that had come to treat such strikes as routine. The findings reshaped how the agency weighed risk for the remaining years of the shuttle program.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
