Columbia is lost

“THE Columbia is lost. There are no survivors. Our entire nation grieves.” President George Bush’s simple words last night confirmed that the United States’ determination to reach for the stars had again ended in tragedy.

As charred pieces of the space shuttle Columbia rained down over a 100-mile strip over Texas and neighbouring Louisiana, the relatives of the seven crew had been quietly led away from the landing strip at Cape Canaveral, Florida, where they had expected to welcome them home.

Just 16 minutes from touchdown, the oldest of America’s shuttles disintegrated more than 200,000ft above the Earth at a speed of 12,500mph.

The final radio broadcast from the Columbia gave no indication that the crew knew anything was wrong. Nasa said it could give no immediate explanation for the disaster.

Television pictures showed numerous white vapour trails blazing across the blue Texas sky.

On board had been six Americans and the first Israeli in space, former fighter pilot and national hero Ilan Ramon. Last night there was at least one report of human remains being discovered among the debris scattered across Texas, including what appeared to be a charred torso, thigh bone and skull.

Following the disaster President Bush went on television to address the nation. “This day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country,” he said.

But he promised: “The cause in which they died will continue. Our journey into space will go on.”

Last night Tony Blair, Russian president Vladimir Putin and the French president Jacques Chirac also sent messages of condolence to Bush and the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

Columbia, which had been on a 16-day scientific mission, had been due to touch down in Florida at 9.16am local time yesterday – 2.16pm British time.

The first sign that something was wrong came when mission control in Houston, Texas, lost all communication and data from the shuttle at about 9am.

The final radio transmission between mission control and the shuttle was routine.

Mission control radioed: “Columbia, Houston, we see your tyre pressure messages and we did not copy your last.”

Columbia responded: “Roger, uh...” Then the transmission broke off.

In north Texas, several residents reported hearing what sounded like a sonic boom at about the same time.

As it became clear that the shuttle had broken up, the US flag next to its countdown clock was lowered to half-mast.

Two hours after the shuttle had been expected to land, the giant screen at the front of mission control showed a map of the south-west United States and what should have been Columbia’s flight path.

Inside mission control, flight controllers hovered in front of their computers, staring at the screens after contact was first lost.

“A contingency for the space shuttle has been declared,” mission control sombrely repeated over and over as no word or any data came from Columbia.

And then shortly after 5pm a senior US official confirmed: “It’s gone.”

Security around the launch and ahead of the landing of Columbia had been extraordinarily tight because of fears that the presence of an Israeli astronaut would make it a target for terrorist attack.

But Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department said: “There is no information that this was a terrorist incident. Obviously the investigation is just beginning but that is the information we have now.”

There was also speculation that a piece of insulating foam on the shuttle’s external fuel tank, which came off and was believed to have hit the left wing of the shuttle during take-off, may have caused more damage than was immediately feared.

Nasa administrator Sean O’Keefe said a full investigation had been launched into the tragedy. “This is a tragic day for the Nasa family, for the families of the astronauts who flew on STS-107 and likewise for the nation,” he said.

“The loss of this valued crew is something we will never be able to get over and certainly the families of all of them we have assured that we will do everything, everything we can possibly do to guarantee that they will get through this horrific tragedy.”

O’Keefe said that although it was not yet known what caused the shuttle to disintegrate, no one and nothing on the ground was responsible.

“It started out as a pretty happy morning, awaiting the landing of STS-107.

“We had highly anticipated their return because we couldn’t wait to congratulate them for their extraordinary performance and their excellent efforts on the science mission on this very important flight.

“They dedicated their lives to pushing the scientific challenges for all of us here on Earth.”

O’Keefe said the seven were an “extraordinary, extraordinary group of astronauts” who gave their lives but did so knowing the risks.

“We diligently dedicate ourselves every single day to ensuring these things don’t occur but when they do, we have to act responsibly and accountably and that’s exactly what we will do.”

At a press conference last night, Ron Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, said the first indication of a problem occurred minutes before 9am (2pm British time) when there was a loss of temperature sensors on the left wing.

Dittemore said the loss of the sensors on the wing, which is believed to have been hit by the piece of insulating foam on take-off, was followed seconds later by several other problems, including a loss of tyre pressure and indications of excessive structural heating.

Former astronaut Bill Readdy, the associate administrator for space flight, said: “It has been a terribly difficult day for all of us.” He described the tragedy as a reminder of the dangers of space exploration. “Today is a very stark reminder this is a very risky endeavour pushing back the frontiers in outer space, and after 113 [shuttle] flights unfortunately people have a tendency to look at it as something that is more or less routine. Well, I can assure you it is not.

“My promise to the crew, and to the crew’s families, is that this investigation we have launched will find the cause, we’ll fix it, and then we’ll move on.”

At a press conference last night, Nasa spokesman Milt Heflin said information from a number of temperature sensors on board the craft were lost in the minutes before the disaster. Shortly after that – at 7.56am central standard time – there were indications of loss of tyre pressure and excessive heating of the shuttle.

“During this time the vehicle was performing fine,” he said.

Then at 7.58am Mission Control lost data from three temperature sensors on the left wing and a minute later further temperature measurements were lost. The crew had just acknowledged a warning display in the cockpit when all contact was suddenly lost.

An emotional Heflin added: “It looks like it was around 8am central standard time at an altitude of 207,135ft, travelling at mach 18.3, the flight control team lost the data. That’s when we clearly began to know that we had a bad day.”

Professor Andre Balogh, of Imperial College in London, said last night that human error would not have been responsible for the disaster.

He said that if any of the heat shield tiles covering the shuttle had come loose, the craft would inevitably disintegrate. The shuttle has to cope with temperatures of up to 1,200ºC (2,300ºF) when it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

“As soon as there is a chink in the armour of the shuttle then it is likely to be a catastrophic failure – once it has started to break up nothing can stop it.”

Balogh, who was in Houston when Challenger exploded in 1986, said the impact of today’s disaster would be felt very deeply.

After the tragedy 17 years ago, no shuttles were launched for nearly three years, he said.

The professor said the lift-off and landing were the most critical times in a space journey.

“When you are landing you have got to cross the atmosphere rather fast and although the shuttle was designed to resist the extremely hot temperatures, early on in the shuttle programmes they had problems with that – that is why they developed the special tiles that cover the shuttle.”

But the professor said the design of the craft could not be blamed for the accident as Columbia had travelled through the atmosphere many times and withstood the heat.

“It is not the design, it is something that went wrong with the shuttle,” he said.

Balogh said once the crew of seven had engaged in the landing sequence, they had no power over the controls until it came to landing on the runway.

He said the problem could have been electronic if the shuttle had entered the atmosphere at the wrong angle.

“If they enter the atmosphere at the wrong angle, then the thermal guard may not be adequate – that would happen if there was a computer error – human error on the shuttle cannot be,” he said.

The professor said the effects of such a tragedy would be very long lasting but he added that the crew on board would probably not have had time to realise their desperate situation.

He said: “In a sense it is very difficult to imagine that the crew would have had much or any notice as to what was happening.”

Following the disaster, President Bush, who had planned to spend the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, returned to the White House in Washington.

The entire chain of command, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, was also alerted to the most serious incident in Nasa’s shuttle programme since the 1986 explosion of the Challenger, in which seven astronauts also died.

The astronauts who died in yesterday’s disaster were Commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, payload commander Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ramon.

Last night Piers Sellers, the last Briton to go into space, told Scotland on Sunday that William McCool was his best friend.

“This is a cruel loss. This is a horrible day for all the people involved,” he said.

“I knew the people involved very well. Two of them were my classmates and one was my best friend.” A recent report by Nasa stated that there was a 50% chance of another shuttle catastrophe before the year 2015.

The report concluded that the most likely scenario was a launch failure caused by the explosion of a main engine. Another possibility was a crash on landing caused by failure of landing gear and brakes.

The shuttle is essentially a glider during the hour-long decent from orbit and is covered by about 20,000 thermal tiles to protect against temperatures as high as 1,600 degrees Celsius.

However despite the extreme conditions, in 42 years of US human space flight, there had never been an accident during the descent to Earth. It was the 113th flight in the shuttle program’s 22 years and the 28th flight for Columbia.

Its crew completed 80-plus scientific research experiments in what was seen as a highly successful mission until disaster struck.

One of the primary onboard experiments, which was sponsored by the Israel Space Agency, involved using cameras to measure desert dust in the atmosphere and gauge its effect on climate change.

A wide assortment of animals – spiders, ants, silkworms, mealworms, carpenter bees, fish embryos and rats – was also on Columbia, mostly for student experiments.