ONLY last week President Bush confirmed funding for a Nasa mission to Mars. Yesterday, mankind was reminded of the dangers of operating in our own backyard.
The explosion which ripped apart Columbia was the latest in a long line of disasters and near misses since man first sent a rocket to space in 1957 with the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite.
The worst previous incident to affect the America
n space programme was the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which claimed the lives of all seven crew. The shuttle was destroyed in a massive explosion which followed a leak in one of the solid fuel boosters.
The disaster, on January 28, 1986, was watched by millions. No one survived.
Other key events include:
OCTOBER 1960: Ninety-one people are killed when an R-16 rocket explodes at the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union.
JANUARY 1967: Three US astronauts, Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Edward White, die in a ‘flash fire’ aboard Apollo 1 during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral.
APRIL 1967: Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov is first man to die in a space mission when a parachute on his spaceship fails on re-entry and the ship crashes to Earth.
JUNE 1971: Three Soviet cosmonauts die during re-entry after 24 days in an orbiting space laboratory, a record endurance flight at that time.
MARCH 18, 1980: Fifty technicians die at Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome when a Vostok booster explodes while being fuelled. The incident is reported only in 1989.
JANUARY 28, 1986: Seven US astronauts including a schoolteacher die aboard the Challenger space shuttle 72 seconds after lift-off from Cape Canaveral.
APRIL 18, 1986: A Titan missile believed to be carrying a military satellite explodes shortly after launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Base launch site in California.
MAY 3, 1986: A Delta rocket carrying a multi-million pound weather satellite explodes shortly after lift-off from Cape Canaveral.
FEBRUARY 22, 1990: Western Europe’s 36th Ariane rocket, carrying two Japanese satellites, explodes less than two minutes after lift-off from Kourou, French Guiana.
SEPTEMBER 7, 1990: Part of a US Titan rocket falls from a crane and explodes at Edwards Air Force Base, sending flames 150 feet into the air and killing at least one person.
JUNE 18, 1991: A 45ft Prospector rocket carrying 10 science experiments for the US space agency and several universities is destroyed after veering off course after launch from Cape Canaveral.
AUGUST 2, 1993: A Titan 4 rocket believed to be carrying an expensive military spy satellite explodes after lift-off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
DECEMBER 1, 1994: Western Europe’s 70th Ariane rocket crashes into the Atlantic with the £100m PanAmsat-3 telecoms satellite after launch from Kourou, French Guiana.
JUNE 4, 1996: Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket explodes 40 seconds into its maiden flight after blasting off from the European Space Agency launch centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
MAY 20, 1997: A Russian Zenit-2 booster rocket carrying a Cosmos military satellite explodes 48 seconds after launch.
AUGUST 12, 1998: The US Titan rocket programme is put on hold when a Titan 4A explodes soon after lift-off in one of history’s most expensive space disasters. The cost of the rocket and its spy satellite cargo was put at more than £670m.
JULY 5, 1999: A Russian Proton-K heavy booster rocket launched from Baikonur suffers a malfunction that detaches the engine and parts of the booster, causing them to crash onto the steppe. A 440lb chunk falls into the courtyard of a private house.
SEPTEMBER 23, 1999: Nasa’s £80m Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft breaks up as it enters the Martian atmosphere due to confusion among its constructors between metric and old English measuring units.
DECEMBER 3, 1999: Nasa’s Mars Polar lander loses contact with earth after reaching the Red Planet. The £98m mission is a write-off.
AUGUST 15, 2002: Nasa’s £100m Contour space probe, launched on July 3 and designed to chase comets, breaks up on leaving Earth’s atmosphere.
DECEMBER 11, 2002: An upgraded European Space Agency Ariane-5 rocket explodes soon after blast-off from Kourou, French Guiana, sending two satellites worth about £400m plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.
