Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after take off on January 28, The Challenger disaster has been linked to unusually cold temperatures in the days leading up to take off. The Columbia disaster was not weather-related. However, weather technology was used to track debris from the shuttle as it disintegrated in the sky over East Texas and western Louisiana on the morning of February 1, I was a meteorologist working in the Lufkin and Nacogdoches area of Texas at the time.
After working the late evening newscasts the night before, I was sleeping in that Saturday morning when my NOAA weather radio sounded an alarm. Confused at first of why my weather radio would sound an alert on a clear morning, I quickly realized this was not a weather alert. The Emergency Alert System has been activated with a civil emergency message instructing residents of the area not to touch space shuttle debris.
National Weather Service Doppler radar in nearby Shreveport, Louisiana captured the path of Columbia as it broke up over the region. Debris was found scattered along a path from southeast of Dallas and south of Tyler to parts of western Louisiana.
Later that day, NASA declared the astronauts lost. The search for debris took weeks, as it was shed over a zone of some 2, square miles 5, square kilometers in east Texas alone. NASA eventually recovered 84, pieces, representing nearly 40 percent of Columbia by weight. Among the recovered material were crew remains, which were identified with DNA.
Much later, in , NASA released a crew survival report detailing the Columbia crew's last few minutes. The astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of Columbia, but lost consciousness in seconds after the cabin lost pressure. The crew died as the shuttle disintegrated. In the weeks after the disaster, a dozen officials began sifting through the Columbia disaster, led by Harold W. Gehman Jr. Joint Forces Command.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, or CAIB, as it was later known, later released a multi-volume report on how the shuttle was destroyed, and what led to it. Besides the physical cause — the foam — CAIB produced a damning assessment of the culture at NASA that had led to the foam problem and other safety issues being minimized over the years.
It also called for more predictable funding and political support for the agency, and added that the shuttle must be replaced with a new transportation system. It is in the nation's interest to replace the shuttle as soon as possible," the report stated.
The shuttle's external tank was redesigned, and other safety measures were implemented. In July , STS lifted off and tested a suite of new procedures, including one where astronauts used cameras and a robotic arm to scan the shuttle's belly for broken tiles. NASA also had more camera views of the shuttle during liftoff to better monitor foam shedding.
Due to more foam loss than expected , the next shuttle flight did not take place until July Read more about the space shuttle program. The shuttle fleet was maintained long enough to complete the construction of the International Space Station, with most missions solely focused on finishing the building work; the ISS was also viewed as a safe haven for astronauts to shelter in case of another foam malfunction during launch.
NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe initially canceled this mission in out of concern from the recommendations of the CAIB, but the mission was reinstated by new administrator Michael Griffin in ; he said the improvements to shuttle safety would allow the astronauts to do the work safely.
The space shuttle program was retired in July after missions, including the catastrophic failures of Challenger in and Columbia in that killed a total of 14 astronauts. NASA developed a commercial crew program to eventually replace shuttle flights to the space station, and brokered an agreement with the Russians to use Soyuz spacecraft to ferry American astronauts to orbit. The first commercial crew flights were delayed several years due to developmental and funding delays.
Their concerns were not addressed in the two weeks that Columbia spent in orbit because NASA management believed that even if major damage had been caused, there was little that could be done to remedy the situation.
The first debris began falling to the ground in west Texas near Lubbock at a. One minute later, the last communication from the crew was heard, and at 9 a. Residents in the area heard a loud boom and saw streaks of smoke in the sky.
Debris and the remains of the crew were found in more than 2, locations across East Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Making the tragedy even worse, two pilots aboard a search helicopter were killed in a crash while looking for debris.
Strangely, worms that the crew had used in a study that were stored in a canister aboard the Columbia did survive. In August , an investigation board issued a report that revealed that it in fact would have been possible either for the Columbia crew to repair the damage to the wing or for the crew to be rescued from the shuttle.
The Columbia could have stayed in orbit until February 15 and the already planned launch of the shuttle Atlantis could have been moved up as early as February 10, leaving a short window for repairing the wing or getting the crew off of the Columbia. In the aftermath of the Columbia disaster, the space shuttle program was grounded until July 16, , when the space shuttle Discovery was put into orbit. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! By , Netflix had already fundamentally changed the way Americans consumed movies and television.
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