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20 Years Ago, Space Shuttle Columbia's Tragic Loss Changed Spaceflight Forever

Over the next 24 hours, you're bound to see an outpouring of tributes online or on the news eulogizing those lost aboard Space Shuttle Columbia 20 years ago. The purpose of these eulogies is and should always be to celebrate the lives and the unique stories of each of the seven astronauts lost that day.
Space Shuttle Columbia 20th Anniversary 35 photos
Photo: NASA
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But even beyond the unimaginable human loss on February 1st, 2003, which should never for a solitary second be understated, the effects of the STS-107 mission affected how NASA operates today on a profound level. Today, let's do our best to honor the legacy of Columbia's final crew by telling the story of the orbiter on which they sacrificed their lives. Plus, the considerable fallout afterward.

As the first Low Earth Orbit-capable Space Shuttle to be completed and flown into space, Columbia was a vehicle unlike anything the world had seen before. A brutish 180,000 lb (81,600 kg) leviathan of a machine strapped to an equally enormous 535,000-gallon fuel tank. It was also flanked on either side by a set of the most powerful solid rocket boosters (SRBs) ever built until the early 2020s.

Everything was all tied together with three Aerojet-Rocketdyne RS-25 main engines that, even today, are still used in an upgraded form on the SLS Moon rocket. Each Shuttle orbiter's thermal protection system was assembled piece by piece by teams of highly skilled craftsmen. This system was comprised mostly of LI-900 silica ceramic tiles on the vehicle's undercarriage.

But in places like the nose cone, landing gear doors, and the leading edges of the wings where the heat of atmospheric re-entry was the most intense, tiles made of what's known as reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) were used. The latter of these two heat-ablative tiles would become something like an Achille's heel for Columbia.

Space Shuttle Columbia 20th Anniversary
Photo: NASA
But the largest issue which arguably contributed most to how events unfolded was that it'd take years before action was taken to fix the problem. All well too late at that. In the break-neck pace to reach new frontiers, oversights like this can never be truly eradicated. Rocket scientists are still human, after all, even they are prone to mistakes. It took six long, agonizing years to piece together each of the millions of individual parts of Columbia's construction starting in 1975. As the flagship product for its manufacturer Rockwell International, Columbia launched for the first time with only two astronauts aboard during the STS-1 mission.

The first six missions Columbia flew in Low Earth Orbit carried ejection seats derived from the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird on board. In both instances of loss-of-hull accidents involving the Space Shuttle, these ejection seats were starkly absent. In the meantime, Columbia busied itself as the impromptu ambassador for the entire Space Shuttle initiative alongside Challenger.

Between 1981 and 2003, Columbia deployed the famous Chandra X-Ray Observatory into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), carried the first female commander of an American space mission, the first ESA astronaut, the first female Indian astronaut, and the first Israeli astronaut, among a slew of other firsts and accolades. That's without mentioning its time making service runs to the International Space Station and Mir look like a cakewalk.

But all it took to bring an abrupt, tragic end to Columbia's story was a 26.7-ounce (0.75 kg) slab of insulating foam from the orbiter's fuel tank. Little did most at NASA and around the world know at the time, but that piece of foam impacted the RCC heat deflector tiles on the leading edge of the left wing, all but doomed Columbia. Even before this disaster, foam strikes can and did plague Space Shuttle launches in the past.

Space Shuttle Columbia 20th Anniversary
Photo: NASA
Most notably during the launch of Shuttle Atlantis on STS-27 in 1988. Each time this happened previously, the astronauts on board managed to make it home safely. But STS-107 was much less fortunate. Though Atlantis was able to shrug off its foam strike on a less vital portion of the spacecraft's airframe, Columbia's foam-strike 82 seconds after liftoff had pierced straight through where the re-entry stresses are the most intense.

Less than 20 minutes before the orbiter's scheduled touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that fateful day, Columbia broke apart over the state of Texas. STS-107's crew, consisting of Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willliam C. McCool, and Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla, Ilan Ramon, Laurel Clark, David M. Brown, and Michael P. Anderson, are thought to have died instantly upon breakup. This was unlike the Challenger disaster that aired live on CNN in 1986, where the crew is thought to have survived until impact with the water.

This was the only tiny semblance of a silver lining to be derived from such an avoidable tragedy, but that was no consolation for the loved ones of those onboard. Or for the engineers and scientists at NASA's Mission Control who loved those brave souls like family, for that matter. The public at large, as well as the U.S. Government, demanded answers from NASA in the wake of the accident.

The subsequent federally-funded Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) found that RCC tiles may very well be excellent at deflecting re-entry heat. But the force involved with a foam slab less than three pounds in weight impacting at in excess of 500 mph (804 kph) was enough to punch a gaping hole through the material. Meaning, of course, RCC's positive traits as a heat shield also made the material; extremely brittle.

Released less than a year after the incident in August 2003, the report of the investigation's findings wasn't a damning indictment of the brilliant but still fallible engineers at NASA or Rockwell International. Instead, the blame was placed on many of the same issues which contributed to the loss of Challenger as well. Among the 29 recommendations the CAIB levied, better pre-flight inspections, and an emphasis on preventing external tank insulation strikes in the first place were among the most buzzworthy.

In some ways, the parallels between Columbia's foam strike and the failed O-rings inside Challenger's SRB bore similarities that NASA simply could not and vowed it would not ignore. To say the former's accident changed the trajectory of NASA forever would be an understatement. For one thing, it's interesting to note that Rockwell and NASA initially pegged each Space Shuttle orbiter as capable of handling hundreds of launches before retirement.

Even well before the loss of Columbia, and possibly even before the loss of Challenger, it was clear there was no way from an economic perspective to make that kind of launch schedule plausible. Even on the reduced schedule of 135 missions in total, losing a third of a fleet of six orbiters to catastrophic accidents is widely seen in the public eye as less than acceptable. An additional note of the CAIB's investigation stated that each operational orbiter should have every nut and bolt of its construction re-certified after the year 2010.

As it happens, the Shuttle program wouldn't make it more than two calendar years into the 2010s. By 2005, NASA's next-generation human-crewed initiative, the Constellation program, had gotten underway. Over time, this program birthed the Lockheed Martin Orion crew module. When the Constellation program was reorganized into the Artemis program in 2017, its SLS super-heavy launch vehicle sported a breadth of upgraded equipment from the Shuttle program that Columbia got rolling.

Space Shuttle Columbia 20th Anniversary
Photo: NASA
The focal point of any coverage of the 20th anniversary of Columbia's loss must always be memorializing the seven astronauts who gave their lives for their shared passion for spaceflight. That said, one can't help but conjure a million different "what if" scenarios in relation to how things could have turned out had events that morning gone even a little bit differently.

What if another Shuttle orbiter was at the ready in case of an emergency? What if the SR-71 ejection seats from the first six launches hadn't been removed? Had Columbia made it back safely after the foam strike as Atlantis did, could the Shuttle program have flown even longer? Potentially even to this day? It's a 100 percent natural human emotion to mull over every piece of minutia after such a horrific tragedy.

But the wiser we grow in our years, and after the initial shock of what's transpired very slowly dissipates, we all come to understand these hypotheticals are counterproductive. But for those longing for a more honorable and fitting silver lining for the Columbia's fine crew, consider this. Since February 1st, 2003, precisely ZERO human souls have been lost to spacecraft-related accidents.

Celebrating the quantum leap in astronaut safety provided by private and government spaceflight since this accident is perhaps the best way we could eulogize these immortal men and women. A group of seven mortal people who became martyrs for science, space exploration, and the betterment of the human race.

Thus making themselves, at least in some ways, immortal. Thanks to a permanent memorial inshrined inside the  Godspeed, Columbia. You and your crew will never, ever be forgotten.
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