COLUMBIA SHUTTLE DISASTEROn February 1, 2003,America and the world watched as the doomed Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the skies above Texas, instantly killing all seven crew members.It was Columbia's 28th mission and the crew had spent the previous two weeks carrying out experiments into microgravity as they orbited the earth.But as the shuttle re-entered the earth's atmosphere, disaster struck and commander Richard Husband, pilot William McCool , payload specialists Michael Anderson and Ilan Ramon, and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark perished.In fact the mission had been doomed from the very start. Take-off was delayed by numerous problems for two years and when the shuttle was finally launched on January 16 a small foam insulation panel broke loose and debris struck the left wing, damaging the shuttle's thermal protection system.Engineers suspected that Columbia had been damaged but after much debate among NASA managers, it was decided that whether there was damage or not nothing could be done about it and the mission should continue.They attempted to bring the shuttle back to Earth as originally planned, but hot gases in the atmosphere penetrated the craft's structure and caused it to break up, scattering fragments across the Texas countryside from an altitude of 38 miles.An investigation into the tragedy concluded that the falling foam had breached the shuttle's left wing but was also highly critical of the decision-making and risk-assessment processes within NASA, leading to drastic changes in the agency's policy for future missions.The crew was mainly made up of high-ranking US Navy and Air Force officers, but also included Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and Israel's first astronaut, and Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer. For most of the crew it was their first space flight.Two days after the disaster, President George W Bush led a memorial service at the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center in Texas."In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket ... these astronauts knew the dangers and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more," he said.A memorial was built at Arlington National Cemetery and their names were added to the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Asteroids were named after each of the astronauts, as were numerous NASA buildings. A plaque honouring them was placed on the surface of Mars by the rover Spirit in 2004.
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