08:52:29 a.m. ( 4 minutes 15 seconds after video ends) First signs of trouble begin to appear on right side of shuttle when approximately 10 percent of the strain gauges in the right wing show a small but unusual data trend.
After this point, heating abnormalities become more and more of a problem causing some holes in the left wing to allow hot gasses to enter the internals of the wing and create imbalances in the flow over the wing.
The shuttle is on auto-pilot and begins making small adjustments to compensate for the abnormal flows which are causing the shuttle to veer off its planned course.
08:53:45 a.m. ( 5 minutes 16 seconds after video ends ) First report of debris observed leaving the orbiter.
For the next 5 minutes, multiple failures occur due to the excessive heat. Debris is seen leaving the orbiter from observers in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico.
At 08:58:04 a.m. ( 9 minutes 5 seconds after video ends ) Very large adjustments are calculated by the auto-pilot to correct major flight instability.
08:58:20 a.m ( 9 minutes 16 seconds after video ends ) Shuttle crosses Mexico border into Texas.
08:58:48 a.m. ( 9 minutes 44 seconds after video ends ) Shuttle Commander Rick Husband transmits a radio communication "And, uh, Hou(ston)..."
08:59:32 a.m. ( 10 minutes 33 seconds after video ends ) Rick Husband transmits his last radio communication "Roger, uh buh (CUTOFF)" (Editor's note: Phonetically, sounded like first syllable of "before" or possibly "both;" he may have been responding to the BFS fault messages for both left-side main landing gear tires) This coincides with the INITIAL LOSS OF SIGNAL (LOS) at which point no data is able to be streamed to mission control.
Major Crash/Breakup occurs around 09:00:02 a.m. A final data burst is transmitted from the shuttle but reports mostly errors and garbled data, only a few of the measurements could be analysed. ( 11 minutes 3 seconds after video ends )
At the time of breakup the shuttle was travelling about 12,500 mph at an altitude of 207,000 feet
Normally this onboard video would have recorded the entire landing sequence all the way to touchdown at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This video was recovered from the wreckage but the final moments were damaged and so it ends premature.
Unfortunate as it was, at the very least, the crew was doing something they loved. God bless them:
Commander: Rick D. Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer, who piloted a previous shuttle during the first docking with the International Space Station (STS-96).
Pilot: William C. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander
Payload Commander: Michael P. Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and physicist who was in charge of the science mission.
Payload Specialist: Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut.
Mission Specialist: Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer who was on her second space mission.
Mission Specialist: David M. Brown, a U.S. Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon. Brown worked on a number of scientific experiments.
Mission Specialist: Laurel Blair Salton Clark, a U.S. Navy captain and flight surgeon. Clark worked on a number of biological experiments.
In Memoriam
Apollo 1 AS-204 - January 27, 1967; 23:31:19 UTC 49 years ago
Challenger OV-099 - STS-51-L January 28, 1986 11:39:13 EST (16:39:13 UTC) 30 years ago
Columbia OV-102 - February 1, 2003 08:59 EST (13:59 UTC) almost 13 years ago
That is the stuff courage is made of, knowing you will be in peril and proceeding, embracing that danger and going forward. They all have my respect, and undying gratitude for raising the bar to new heights.
Space shuttle crash was, in part, caused by the EPA mandating an environmentally friendly foam on the external fuel tank.
Of course it turned out to be not so environmentally friendly to have several tons of space shuttle and roasted human remains vaporized in the atmosphere over the U.S. on a failed reentry. But, at least NASA got to show how it used that nice ozone-safe foam.
Thanks for the link to the video.
I was a Shuttle engineer working for Rockwell out of Downey, CA for many years.
I have related the story below a couple of times, but I want to insure that future space historians have all the facts to determine what really happened with Columbia.
I was assigned to a team from Lab & Test Dept. to go to JSC and make them aware of the problems with the RCC leading edge on Columbia. I do not recall the year, but I think it was between 1995 and 1997.
Specifically, L&T found tiny craters on the RCC leading edge after one of Columbia’s flights. Note that the RCC was visually checked for problems using magnified images.
L&T concluded that the shock wave off the nose was impinging on the RCC (Reinforced Carbon-Carbon) leading edge resulting in very high heating rates in that area. At high enough temps, the oxygen molecules were crossing the glass coating and forming CO (carbon monoxide) which then outgassed causing the craters. They reproduced these results in the Lab.
L&T dubbed this process “de-densification” and showed that the RCC lost it’s structural integrity over time. After CT scanning, they learned that the RCC on Columbia had become so weak, you could poke your finger through it.
I was in that meeting at JSC and still have my notes on who was there.
I recall that at the time we were told, “RCC is $30,000 per square foot. There is NO money in the budget to replace the leading edge on Columbia”.
I left the program to work on the CSOC proposal.
Did they replace the RCC before the foam impact? I do not know and most of my contacts have retired.
Someone needs to look into this to find out if it was simply the foam or whether the weakened RCC was an accident waiting to happen.
Ice-laden foam was always a hazard and known risk. However, the loss of the Orbiter may have also been due to a budgetary oversight by the Agency.
I hope my information helps.