Columbia Space Shuttle: The Disaster By: Blair Raphael

Columbia’s History Named after Robert Gray’s Columbia Sailboat First space worthy space shuttle in NASA’s orbital fleet Its first mission lasted from April 12th to April 14th, 1981 Its final, most famous mission was the space shuttle’s 28th flight

Qualities Columbia had an extraordinary weight of 8,000 pounds It was the only orbiter in the fleet that had an all-tile thermal protection system (TPS) The TPS is the barrier that protects the Space Shuttle Orbiter during the searing heat of atmospheric re-entry

Qualities Only operational orbiter with an American Flag and the “USA” logo on its left wing Columbia’s SISTL pod was located on top of its tailfin and was used by NASA for experiments

What Happened? While concluding its 28th mission, the Columbia space shuttle broke apart This happened 16 minutes before scheduled landing time into Florida’s Kennedy Space Center All seven crew members were killed in the debris

CAUSES A seal on the left wing was struck by a piece of foam the size of a small briefcase during liftoff and fell off the next day At the time, this didn’t seem like a problem While the Columbia was still in orbit, engineers suspected damage but no major investigations were ordered by NASA

CAUSES During re-entry, the damaged area allowed the hot gasses to penetrate and destroy the internal wing structure Damage to the internal wing structure caused the in-flight break up Massive ground searches recovered crew remains and many vehicle fragments