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<p>CAPE CANAVERAL -- A rushed launch of a rescue shuttle. Two orbiters drifting in tight formation at 17,500 mph. A series of harrowing spacewalks to move astronauts from one crippled shuttle to one that could bring them safely back to Earth.</p>

April 22, 2003 3,000 Amateurs Offer NASA Photos of Columbia's Demise Associated PressContrails from the Columbia are seen in a video image taken by two Dutch military pilots training at Fort Hood, Tex., on Feb. 1. This widely circulated image, purported to be of the shuttle Columbia, is actually from the 1998 movie "Armageddon." By JOHN SCHWARTZ OUSTON, April 19 - Dan McNew thought he had shot the home movie of a lifetime. He had aimed his digital video camera at the shuttle Columbia as it returned to earth on Feb. 1; living near Dallas, in the path of...

Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:24:29 -0800 From: Jim Warren Subject: Autodesk's founder reports gross errors by Limbaugh, CNN, Snopes Cc: [Snopes and a whole bunch of CNN circular file email addresses; Mr. Warren doesn't seem to know the news biz very well --DMTW] [If you know John, you know him to be a most ardent stickler for facts. Here, John is not reporting hearsay; he's reporting about what's happened on his own server, and images he provides thereon. --jim] At 12:34 AM +0100 3/29/03, John Walker wrote: Subject: Sniping at Snopes.comAlmost everybody's experienced the phenomenon of encountering a description...

March 9 — As the space shuttle Columbia was breaking apart over Texas on Feb. 1, one of the shuttle's pilots may have attempted to take control of the spacecraft, ABCNEWS has learned. On re-entry, the shuttle normally is controlled by on-board computers. But recovered data from the last seconds of flight indicates that one of the pilots, commander Rick Husband or Wille McCool, may have attempted to disengage the auto pilot in what would have been a futile effort to regain control of Columbia, sources working with investigators told ABCNEWS. Astronauts are taught to take control of the shuttle...

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) -- The board investigating the Columbia tragedy said Tuesday it wants to know more about a mysterious object that almost certainly fell off the shuttle and was flying alongside the spacecraft during its second day in orbit. Meanwhile, NASA said late Tuesday night that a videotape from inside Columbia's cockpit has been recovered from the wreckage and shows four of the astronauts just before their ship began experiencing trouble.Thirteen minutes of tape were preserved; the rest was burned. The tape ends four minutes after the shuttle's atmospheric entry, while the shuttle is still over the Pacific...

Board: Shuttle Lost Parts Over Calif. SPACE CENTER, Houston - Space shuttle Columbia began losing pieces over the California coast well before it disintegrated over Texas, the accident investigation board reported Tuesday, finally confirming what astronomers and amateur skywatchers have been saying from Day One. But board member James Hallock, a physicist and chief of the Transportation Department's aviation safety division, said the fragments were probably so small they burned up before reaching the ground. He said the conclusion that the space shuttle was shedding pieces a full six minutes before it came apart over Texas was based on images...

ASTRONOMY/SPACE ALERT FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Brian Webb, KD6NRP Ventura County, California E-mail: kd6nrp@earthlink.net Web Site: http://home.earthlink.net/~kd6nrp 2003 February 12 (Wednesday) 20:00 PST ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SPACE SHUTTLE REENTRY OBSERVATIONS In response to my request for observations of the February 1, 2003 Columbia reentry, I have received numerous reports. The following is a compilation of all of the usable accounts received. These reports have been edited for brevity and clarity. Many observers may sound upbeat about the disaster, but this is the result of my taking their comments out of context. Also, the location listed under an observer's name is that from which...

NASA Releases Tape of Final Mission Control Conversation From Columbia Flight The Associated Press SPACE CENTER, Houston Feb. 11 — Engineers in Mission Control never lost their composure even as they lost hope that space shuttle Columbia would make it safely home.Conversations between the flight controllers, released Tuesday, suggests the engineers were waiting helplessly at Mission Control while Columbia came apart on the threshold of space, scattering debris across two states and killing seven astronauts.Flight director Leroy Cain quickly shifted his attention from landing the craft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to saving computer data that might...

People in the News LITTLE ROCK (AP) - Former President Bill Clinton will debut with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra on the March 25 program "Let Freedom Ring," a celebration of the American spirit that pays tribute to the seven Columbia astronauts. Clinton will narrate Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait," which includes excerpts from speeches by Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The orchestra will perform Gustav Holst's "Jupiter," the fourth movement of Holst's seven-movement suite "The Planets," to honor the astronauts who died when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart before landing on Feb. 1. Foreman native...

New York Times Week in Review From Excitement to Horror: Columbia's Last Flight Online By TOM KUNTZ The 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster was carried live to a large radio audience. The 1986 space shuttle disaster happened live on network television before millions of stunned viewers. Almost from the beginning, the 9/11 attacks were broadcast live worldwide. Last weekend's shuttle disaster also unfolded live, but the primary medium was arguably not radio or television. It was the Internet. A small audience of space enthusiasts learned of trouble in real time by tuning in to mission control in Houston via NASA...

Check out some of the experiments they were doing www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/2003/sts107-overview.pdf

"Wow." That was astronaut Tammy Jernigan's stunned reaction last night when she viewed a photo of what appears to be space shuttle Columbia getting zapped by a purplish electrical bolt shortly before it disintegrated Saturday morning. Former astronaut Tammy Jernigan "It certainly appears very anomalous," Jernigan told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We sure will be very interested in taking a very hard look at this." The photo was one of five captured by an amateur astronomer in San Francisco who routinely snaps pictures of shuttles when they pass over the Bay area. The pictures were taken just seven minutes before...

Crew members of the Space Shuttle Columbia were concerned about the orbiter's damaged left wing according to United States Senator George Allen. (Republican-Virginia)One of the crew members, Mission Specialist David Brown, sent e-mail messages to his brother Doug during the mission, Allen said. In those e-mails, David Brown said that the crew took pictures of the left wing because they were concerned about it, Allen said.The Senator was only repeating information he recieved from Doug Brown, said his spokeswoman, Carrie Cantrell. There was no phone listing for Doug Brown's home in Arlington and he could not be reached today. A...

Meteorite 'may have hit shuttle' Nasa says a small meteorite or piece of man-made space junk may have struck the Columbia shuttle causing it to crash. Even a tiny scrap of debris grazing the shuttle could have damaged thermal tiles just enough to start a chain reaction. The comments by Milt Heflin, the space agency's flight director, cast doubt on the lead theory that a piece of foam insulation damaged the craft during blast off. "Did we take some hit? That's a possibility. Something was breached," he has told the Los Angeles Times. William Ailor, president of Aerospace Corporation, said...

Southern N.M. facility might have information on Columbia WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE (AP) — Monitoring systems at the White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces could contain information about Saturday’s Columbia space shuttle disaster. The facility includes NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, which records and transmits all data sent from space shuttles to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ron D. Dittemore. shuttle program manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said Monday from Houston that he would send a team to White Sands to try to extract extra information. ‘it might just be that there’s a...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Sprites and elves dancing on thunder clouds have been captured by cameras on the space shuttle Columbia. The sprites, which are red flashes of electricity shooting up from thunderclouds 13 miles (20 km) into the ionosphere, and elves, which are glowing red doughnut shapes radiating 190 miles (300 km), were photographed Sunday by astronaut Dave Brown on the sprite hunt's first orbit. Columbia and a crew of seven astronauts are on a 16-day science mission that began Thursday. The study of sprites is part of an Israeli experiment known as MEIDEX that includes the first...

<p>U.S. spy satellites are taking high-resolution photographs to help locate debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia, Defense Department officials said yesterday.</p> <p>The images of the doomed spacecraft's flight path are being used by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pinpoint pieces of the shuttle that disintegrated when returning from space Saturday, said Defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>

TELEVISION CNN's Brown plays through shuttle story Anchor decides to stay on the links during disaster follow-up, a decision which infuriates executives.By Elizabeth JensenTimes Staff Writer February 4 2003 NEW YORK -- Tom Brokaw was snorkeling off the Virgin Islands Saturday morning when he saw the boat's captain, 40 feet away, frantically waving. Two planes and less than nine hours later, just before 3 p.m. PST, he was on the air anchoring NBC's Columbia space shuttle coverage from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The lead anchors for ABC and CBS made it on the air too, but not CNN's Aaron Brown, whose...

On Saturday, I set three alarms for 6 in the morning. But when I turned on the television, I was puzzled by the relative silence at Mission Control. Though landing time was approaching, there was little activity. The realization dawned as slowly for me, a veteran astronaut, as for everyone else. There was no immediate or decisive announcement, only a slow recognition that a catastrophe had occurred. I didn't know these astronauts. But I know what they were doing, because I've done it. Astronauts face danger all the time. It's a job where danger is a basic assumption. But you...

No shuttle replacements seen for a decade 5 February 2003 01:40 By Chris Stetkiewicz SEATTLE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Aviation experts believe NASA will not replace the lost space shuttle Columbia for about 10 years, sticking to a schedule that may force the agency to rely more on Russia to supply the International Space Station. Building a replica shuttle would be too costly, leaving a next-generation "orbital space plane" due to enter service around 2010 as the earliest possible relief for the remaining three shuttles, which could keep flying for decades to come, according to experts advising NASA and the...

But more informal Web writing makes for just as fascinating reading. A nearly two-month long Space.com thread that tracked the shuttle’s progress is, as one poster puts it, “Almost like a dark novel, full of foreboding, clues to the pending disaster.” A FreeRepublic.com thread is equally sad. The “Mission Status Center” at SpaceFlightNow.com contains another minute-by-minute account of the shuttle’s flight.

The memorial service for the astronauts of STS 107.

<p>The doomed flight of space shuttle Columbia carried ants, spiders, mold and worms, along with experiments that could shed light on problems from global warming to prostate cancer.</p> <p>But its most important scientific cargo was less tangible: The 100 experiments on board the shuttle represented hundreds of combined years of work by scientists and technicians on the ground.</p>

The hunt for the remains of the space shuttle Columbia expanded all the way west to California as officials announced late yesterday they had found the front of the doomed shuttle's nose cone in Texas. The search zone, initially limited to a 500-square-mile swath of southeast Texas and northwest Louisiana, was broadened after NASA received reports that Columbia might have started breaking up sooner than first thought. "If we find any debris upstream of Fort Worth, New Mexico and Arizona, that's really important to us," said Ron Dittemore, manager of the space shuttle program. "That would be a real key...

NACOGDOCHES, Texas –– Searchers found the front of the space shuttle Columbia's nose cone buried deep in the ground near the Louisiana border, officials said Monday night. "It's reasonably intact," said Warren Zahner, a senior coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing collection of shuttle debris . Other officials said the nose cone was burrowed deep in the ground. A crew was to return to the site about three miles west of Hemphill, near the Louisiana border, on Tuesday to excavate the nose cone. The shuttle broke up 39 miles over Texas and fell to Earth as it...

<p>February 4, 2003 -- NACOGDOCHES, Texas - A piece of Columbia debris has landed in the New York City area, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency told The Post last night.</p> <p>"This thing is unprecedented," said the spokesman, Karl Suchman. "The debris is everywhere."</p>

s early as 1997, a senior NASA engineer warned that hardened foam popping off the external fuel tank on the Columbia shuttle had caused significant damage to the ceramic tiles protecting the vehicle from re-entry temperatures.The warning was sure to receive new scrutiny after NASA said yesterday that its investigation into the cause of the destruction of the space shuttle on Saturday was focusing on damage to tiles that may have been caused by foam or ice or a combination of the two. NASA officials also acknowledged that they might have underestimated the potential seriousness of damage sustained by...

Respond to this Article April 1980 Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Goodbye, Columbia By Gregg Easterbrook This April 1980 Washington Monthly cover story on the problems and progress of NASA's space shuttle program was written one year before Columbia's first launch in 1981. To view a larger image of the original cover, click here. The most expensive flying machine ever constructed sputtered and smacked through the low waves, kicking up spray, straining mightily to take flight. It had been bobbing by the dock in Long Beach...

February 2, 2003 A Wealth of Information OnlineBy JOHN SCHWARTZ nce again, the Internet has proved to be an invaluable news source in time of disaster. But yesterday's events showed something else about the power of the Net. Not only does it give people access to the news and to one another but it also gives them vast amounts of information and the ability to synthesize and disseminate it. That was nowhere more clear than on the high-tech community known as Slashdot, at www.slashdot.org, where members posted more than 1,100 messages by 5 p.m. that included links to NASA pages,...

According to NASA's own websites, the shuttle has 25 minutes to abort a launch before the shuttle enters orbit. Had NASA considered the damage to the wing to be a danger to the crew, they could possibly have saved the lives of the 7 astronauts and we would today be speaking of that dramatic event rather than mourning their deaths. I am in no way blaming NASA for the deaths of these crew members, but instead I am trying to answer the MANY posters who have said the crew was doomed from the start. While it is true that the...

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- If liftoff damage to Columbia's thermal tiles caused the disaster, was the crew doomed from the very start?</p> <p>Or could NASA have saved all or some of the seven astronauts by trying some Hollywood-style heroics -- a potentially suicidal spacewalk, perhaps, or a rescue mission by another shuttle?</p> <p>Some of the ideas that have been suggested would have been highly impractical, dangerous and perhaps futile.</p>

I thought the media did an awful job with the thousands of questions they have asked. Some questions have been asked multiple times. If you were a reporter, what question would you ask - OR, what questions do you need answered. I can think of many. One question I haven't heard asked yet is: When did the space station crew learn of the disaster and what have been the conversations with them and what were their comments and concerns?

February 2, 2003 Loss of Shuttle a Serious Blow to International Space StationBy BARRY JAMES, International Herald Tribune ARIS, Feb. 3 — The loss of the Columbia and its seven-man crew was not only a terrible tragedy for the United States but is also a potentially serious blow to the International Space Station, a collaborative effort by the United States, Russia, and Europe, that some experts said may have to be abandoned, at least for the time being. The grounding of the space shuttle fleet follows a run of bad luck for Europe's Ariane 5 rocket, one of which exploded...

Developing. Watch MSNBC for latest. Internal memo shows some engineers believe there was up to a 7 1/2-inch gash from the foam breakoff at launch. Memo was serious enough to go out to all NASA centers two days before disaster.

<p>A San Francisco amateur astronomer who photographs the space shuttles whenever their orbits carry them over the Bay Area has captured five strange and provocative images of the shuttle Columbia just as it was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere before dawn Saturday.</p>

TV news channels report that NASA is saying that its investigators have found the remains of all seven astronauts. A senior IDF Rabbinate official has been sent by the army to Texas to ensure that in the event the remains of Col. Ilan Ramon are found, they will be brought back to Israel for burial. A security official told the Jerusalem Post that the senior officer will not participate in the search or the examination of the remains of any of the astronauts found strewn in the debris. But in the event body parts found are verified to be those...

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) With security tighter than usual, space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut.</p> <p>The early morning fog burned off as the sun rose, and Mission Control gave the seven astronauts the go-ahead to come home on time. ''I guess you've been wondering, but you are 'go' for the deorbit burn,'' Mission Control radioed at practically the last minute.</p>

Instructions for Uploading Images and Video Related to the Columbia AccidentFor anyone who has recorded video or taken photos that they believe may be of aid in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA has established a special location on the Web where Internet users may upload their media files to be reviewed by NASA. Using the FTP method of your choice, log on to the server 38.201.67.72 as "anonymous," using your e-mail address as your password. Example: User ID: anonymous Password: john_doe@hotmail.com Along with any image or video file that you wish to upload, please include...

God punished the space shuttle Columbia because its crew, which included an Israeli astronaut, was on an espionage mission against the Arab and Muslim nations, some Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post today. Many did not share the feelings of their leaders, such as Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat who offered his condolences to the US over the Columbia tragedy. "They were sent to space to spy on the Arabs and Muslims,"said Rudainah Salman, a 28-year-old schoolteacher from Ramallah. "I have no sympathy for the astronauts because they were doing something bad to us....

A spacecraft is a metaphor of national inspiration: majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear cost and entrusted with precious cargo, rising above the constraints of the earth. The spacecraft carries our secret hope that there is something better out there—a world where we may someday go and leave the sorrows of the past behind. The spacecraft rises toward the heavens exactly as, in our finest moments as a nation, our hearts have risen toward justice and principle. And when, for no clear reason, the vessel crumbles, as it did in 1986 with Challenger and last week with Columbia, we falsely...

Poynteronline Posted, Feb. 1, 2003 Updated, Feb. 1, 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster Coverage Resources, Story Ideas and More By Al Tompkins Shuttle Links and BackgroundYou can receive live Shuttle Communications at http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/missions/live/live.ram via RealAudio. This is Houston Mission Control's live audio. There will be long delays between transmissions from Mission Control. Just minimize the window and keep it running if you want/need to monitor developments. Do us all a favor and don't have all of your newsroom computers running this. COMPANION PIECES Additional Resources: Coverage links & story ideas by Al Tompkins Use the web for unusual angles by Steve Outing5 Tips...

Partial According to eyewitness and video accounts, the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia could be seen, heard and felt by Texans all across North-Central and East Texas and western Louisiana. As we await more information concerning the events of this great tragedy, I want to re-emphasize a note of caution to all living in North and East Texas: if you spot shuttle debris, do not touch it nor go near it. Shuttle materials could pose a grave risk to human health because of toxic propellants used aboard the space shuttle. If you find debris, please call local authorities immediately...

An Italian astronaut who's been on two space flights says an incorrect angle of re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere could have caused the space shuttle Columbia to disintegrate. Falling space shuttle debris (Photo: nbc5i.com) "It is too early to speculate on the precise causes of the accident but the images from Texas suggest that the Columbia broke up into at least three pieces due to an improper angle as it returned into the atmosphere," Umberto Guidoni told Italy's ANSA news agency. NASA declared an emergency after losing all contact with Columbia 16 minutes before it was due to land at...

As Americans mourn the loss of the Columbia space shuttle today, two other nations – Israel and India – are also in shock as a day of anticipated national celebration turned to sadness and grief. Ilan Ramon One of the seven astronauts aboard the craft that took off Jan. 16 was Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, part of Columbia's science mission. In a press statement early on, newly re-elected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said: "The government and people of Israel are praying together with the peoples of the world for the safety of the astronauts on the shuttle Columbia."...

My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At 9:00 a.m. this morning, Mission Control in Houston lost contact with our Space Shuttle Columbia. A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas. The Columbia is lost; there are no survivors. On board was a crew of seven: Colonel Rick Husband; Lt. Colonel Michael Anderson; Commander Laurel Clark; Captain David Brown; Commander William McCool; Dr. Kalpana Chawla; and Ilan Ramon, a Colonel in the Israeli Air Force. These men and women assumed great risk in the service to all...

JANUARY 29, 08:17 ET Astronauts Remember Challenger Disaster By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Space shuttle Columbia's astronauts briefly interrupted their science work on the 17th anniversary of the Challenger disaster to remember their fallen comrades. NASA's work force, in orbit and on Earth, observed a moment of silence Tuesday at the exact time that Challenger exploded in the sky Jan. 28, 1986. They honored not only on the seven Challenger astronauts, but also the three who were killed by a fire in their Apollo spacecraft at the pad Jan. 27, 1967. At the launch...

In light of today's Columbia disaster, it is perhaps time to revisit the intentions behind the now-cancelled National Aerospace Plane (the X-30) program. That program, in many ways, addressed what are apparently many of the problems that led to this explosion and loss of life. In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration, through DARPA (the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency) formed a team of services (the Air Force, Navy, Strategic Defense) and NASA to design and build a scramjet-powered spaceplane that had aicraft-like operational characteristics. The goal was to make a space plane that was genuinely reusable, unlike the shuttles,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The following is a recap of President Bush's day, as recounted to CNN by a senior administration official: 8 a.m. EST President Bush, at the Camp David retreat, receives his usual intelligence briefing. 9 a.m. EST White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, also at Camp David, is channel surfing, flipping through TV stations, and begins watching NASA Television, awaiting the landing. He sees that NASA has lost contact with the space shuttle Columbia. Card calls the Situation Room and then NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe but could not reach him. Card tells Bush that NASA has lost...

As the U.S. and much of the world mourns the loss of seven astronauts killed aboard space shuttle Columbia, NASA's search for the "smoking gun" cause of the disintegration is already underway, and President Bush vows to continue America's leadership in space exploration. "The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors," the president told the nation. "The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on." Nearly 17 years to the day after the Challenger explosion,...