Crash
continued from page 1
virtually ruled out terrorism as a cause
of the disaster.
The tragedy, captured on video
tape and replayed endlessly
throughout the day, was a fresh blow
for a nation still grieving over Sept.
11, 2001, and unsettled by the
specter of war with Iraq.
It also was a grisly bookend to the
disaster that claimed the crew of the
shutde Challenger 17 years ago. Chal
lenger exploded on liftoff from Cape
Canaveral, Fla., where Columbia was
scheduled to touch down.
Relatives of Columbia’s astronauts
had been waiting to celebrate with of
ficials Saturday at Florida’s Kennedy
Space Center.
“We couldn’t wait to congratulate
them for their extraordinary per
formance,” NASA Administrator
Sean O’Keefe said. Instead, he found
himself expressing shock, sadness
and condolences.
The first hint of trouble came at
7:53 a.m. CST, when sensors in the
hydraulic system in the left wing
failed. Three minutes later, sensors
around the left main landing gear
went out. And at 7:59 a.m. CST, sen
sors in the structure on the left side of
the shuttle quit.
“It was like the wires were cut,”
NASA shuttle program head Ron Dit
temore said at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
At 8 a.m. CST, mission controllers
in Houston lost voice contact with the
crew and tracking data. The display
showing the shuttle’s track froze.
“We stared at that for a long time,”
flight operations chief Milt Heflin
said. “I reflected back on what I saw
with Challenger.”
Columbia was at an altitude of
207,000 feet, or about 40 miles, when
it broke apart—too high for it to have
been attacked by aircraft or missiles.
Traveling about 12,500 mph, or 18
times the speed of sound, the aircraft
was in the midst of a series of sharp
turns designed to dissipate its speed.
Efforts to recover debris — includ
ing the remains of the five men and
two women aboard—covered a huge
Ian McVea Fort Worth Star-Telegram (KRT)
BRONSON, TEXAS — A boot sole, apparently from a spacesuit boot belonging to a
crew member of the space shuttle Columbia, was tagged Saturday.
swath of East Texas and Louisiana.
NASA asked members of the public to
help in the search but warned people
not to touch anything that looked like
shuttle debris because it might be con
taminated with toxic propellants. De
spite such warnings, it was only a mat
ter of hours before a few East Texans
were hospitalized and purported
pieces of Columbia were listed for sale
on the auction Web site eBay. They
were quickly removed.
Columbia, which launched the
space shuttle program when it first
flew in 1981, was the oldest vehicle in
NASA’s shuttle fleet. This was its 28th
flight and the 113th shutde flight over
all. Risk analysis studies in recent
years have suggested that a catastro
phe is likely to occur once in every 145
shuttle missions.
“The American people have started
to think that flying the space shuttle is
like getting into a car for a Sunday af
ternoon drive, but it’s anything but
that,” said Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a
former astronaut. “Space flight is risky
business.”
© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.
Nstributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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