Read More. The launch and subsequent explosion was aired live on CNN and was watched in classrooms across the US that morning. NASA had a special satellite broadcast set up for schools across the nation to watch what was supposed to be a historic moment. Christa McAuliffe , a high school teacher from New Hampshire, was supposed to be the first civilian and American teacher in space.
She was selected as part of the Teachers in Space program. She would join commander Francis R. About 82 seconds after Columbia left the ground, a piece of foam fell from a "bipod ramp" that was part of a structure that attached the external tank to the shuttle.
Video from the launch appeared to show the foam striking Columbia's left wing. It was later found that a hole on the left wing allowed atmospheric gases to bleed into the shuttle as it went through its fiery re-entry, leading to the loss of the sensors and eventually, Columbia itself and the astronauts inside.
Several people within NASA pushed to get pictures of the breached wing in orbit. The Department of Defense was reportedly prepared to use its orbital spy cameras to get a closer look. The landing proceeded without further inspection. On Feb. Just before 9 a. EST, however, abnormal readings showed up at Mission Control. Temperature readings from sensors located on the left wing were lost. Then, tire pressure readings from the left side of the shuttle also vanished.
The Capcom, or spacecraft communicator, called up to Columbia to discuss the tire pressure readings. At a. At that point, Columbia was near Dallas, traveling 18 times the speed of sound and still , feet 61, meters above the ground.
Mission Control made several attempts to get in touch with the astronauts, with no success. Twelve minutes later, when Columbia should have been making its final approach to the runway, a mission controller received a phone call. The caller said a television network was showing a video of the shuttle breaking up in the sky. Shortly afterward, NASA declared a space shuttle "contingency" and sent search and rescue teams to the suspected debris sites in Texas and later, 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. 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.
0コメント