Racine's Clark among 7 astronauts killed
Journal Interactive staff
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2003
Racine astronaut Laurel Clark, who had anxiously waited more than two years for her first trip into space, was among the seven crew members killed when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in flames 200,000 feet above north central Texas today.
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Clark, 41, a Navy diving doctor and 1979 graduate of Racine Horlick High School, was responsible for operating much of the science payload on the 16-day mission. In addition to performing experiments, Clark was involved in many of the human life science tests aboard the spacecraft.
In an interview this week in a teleconferencing call from Columbia, she said that other than battling high temperatures inside the shuttle's lab and trying to adapt to space, the trip had been everything she thought it would be, and more.
"This has been a great experience for me," she said at the time. "The first couple of days you don't always feel too well. I feel wonderful now. The first couple of days you adjust to the fluid shifting, how to fly through space without hitting things or anybody else. But then after a couple of days you get in a groove. It's just an incredibly magical place."
Clark had long awaited this mission. When she was assigned to the STS-107 mission in July 2000, the launch was planned for June 2001. But a series of unrelated delays and higher priorities for other shuttle flights postponed Clark's flight again and again.
After high school, Clark went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned degrees in zoology and medicine before joining the Navy. As a Navy diving doctor, Clark has been on several submarine tours of duty. NASA selected Clark as an astronaut in 1996.
Clark, married with an 8-year-old son, was on-board when Columbia roared into space at 9:39 a.m. CST Jan. 16. Clark's mother, Marge Brown, was on-hand for the launch, along with Clark's brothers and sister, Jon, Dan and Lynne Salton. Family members said at the time that the first few minutes of the launch had them extremely nervous.
"Anyone who has watched (video of the) Challenger (accident) can't even hardly bear going through" the point where the Challenger exploded, Jon Salton said Jan. 16. "After that point you can relax."
Lynne Salton said, "When we saw the solid rocket boosters drop away, everything was still fine, my heart lifted a little, and then they got to 'main engine cutoff.' "
In 42 years of U.S. human space flight, there had never been an accident during the descent to Earth or landing. On Jan. 28, 1986, space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.
This mission received more attention than most flights because one of the crew members, Ilan Ramon, was an Israeli pilot. In 1995 the U.S. invited Israel to fly a passenger on the shuttle to operate an experiment for Israeli scientists.