MORE than 20 years before yesterday’s tragedy Nasa staff feared that the shuttle would be destroyed while re-entering the atmosphere.
Columbia was protected by thousands of tiles to shield it from the intense heat that builds up from air friction during re-entry. But some had been damaged or lost before Columbia returned to Earth, and there were fears that the heat could enter thro
ugh unprotected parts of the shuttle and cause a catastrophe.
And the chilling images broadcast throughout the world will have chilled the spines of the original engineers as the nightmare they had envisaged so long ago finally came true.
Before yesterday’s tragic events there had never been an accident during descent or landing in 42 years of US human space flight.
Columbia’s first flight was a total success when it lifted off from Pad A in the Launch Complex 39 area at Kennedy Space Centre on April 12, 1981. It proved the operational concept of a winged, reusable spaceship by successfully completing the Orbital Flight Test Program.
Columbia (OV-102), the first of Nasa’s orbiter fleet, was designed and built by Rockwell International in Palmdale, California, on July 26, 1972.
The completely assembled Columbia spacecraft rolled out of Palmdale on March 8, 1979, and began its long trip to Florida. It made many stops along its way, but eventually reached KSC on March 24.
Columbia was named after a sailing vessel that operated out of Boston in 1792 and explored the mouth of the Columbia River. One of the first ships of the US navy to circumnavigate the globe was named Columbia and the command module for the Apollo 11 lunar mission shared the same name.
After the success of the first mission, the second shuttle mission was launched later that year in November and was the first to carry a scientific payload, a number of Earth sensing devices. It was also the first time the Remote Manipulator Arm was successfully used.
Columbia went on to complete three more successful missions and paved the way for the rest of the space programme.
Other, more recent achievements for Columbia include the recovery of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) satellite from orbit during mission STS-32 in January 1990 and the STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences mission in June 1991 – the first manned Spacelab mission totally dedicated to human medical research.
For five years the shuttle programme was a complete success and saw many monumental moments. In June 1983, Sally Ride become the first American woman to fly in space and in August 1983, Guion S Bluford became the first African-American to fly in space.
But tragedy struck the shuttle programme on January 28, 1986, when the Challenger shuttle exploded 73 seconds after lift-off. The explosion claimed the lives of the entire seven-person crew, including Christa McAulliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space.
The explosion was later determined to be caused by an O-ring failure in the right solid booster rocket. The O-rings hold sections of the booster rocket together. Investigators found that on previous flights, flame damage had occurred to the O-rings but the astronauts had not been informed.
As a result of the Challenger investigation, a major shake-up took place within Nasa. Parts of the shuttle were redesigned and safety procedures were greatly improved.
The Columbia disaster is a severe blow to the space shuttle programme and will almost certainly lead to a renewed emphasis on unmanned space flight. Last night Ron Dittemore, the shuttle programme manager at mission control, said all shuttle flights had been put on hold until the cause of the tragedy was discovered. He added that he could not say what the schedule was for future missions.
One immediate problem with a moratorium on space shuttle fights is the International Space Station, which currently has a crew of three on board. Supplying and developing the ISS was seen as the main task for the shuttle in coming years.
