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Below Updated: January 22, 2003
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Columbia crew killed after shuttle breaks up over Texas
By Haaretz Service and Agencies
February 2, 2003
The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the skies over
Texas on Saturday, killing all seven crew members, including
Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, just 16 minutes before its
scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors," President
George W. Bush told a press conference, five hours after
contact was first lost with the shuttle as it flew over Texas.
The Columbia with the seven astronauts on board, including Ramon, 48,
who was the first Israeli to go into space space, lost contact with
NASA at around 1400 GMT as it came in for landing. Debris was
scattered over a wide swathe of Texas.
"The loss of this valiant crew is something we will never be able
to get over," NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe told a news briefing.
"This is indeed a tragic day."
The last contact with the shuttle, which was ending a 16-day
scientific research mission, was at 4 P.M. Israel time.
The astronauts' family members were taken to an isolated area
away from journalists.
Shortly after it was confirmed the shuttle had broken up, the
American flag next to its countdown clock was lowered to
half-mast.
Columbia was at an altitude of 60,210 meters (200,700 feet),
traveling at 20,113 kph (12,500 mph), when mission control
lost contact. There was no further communication and no further
tracking data.
Fifteen minutes after the expected landing time, and with
no word from the shuttle, NASA announced that search and rescue
teams were being mobilized in Dallas and Fort Worth areas in
Texas.
One focus: Possible damage to Columbia's protective thermal
tiles
The cause of the tragedy was not immediately known.
An independent commission was appointed to investigate.
One potential focus: possible damage to Columbia's protective
thermal tiles on the left wing from a flying piece of debris
during liftoff.
Investigators trying to figure out what destroyed the shuttle
immediately homed in on the left wing and the possibility
that its thermal tiles were damaged far more seriously than
NASA realized during liftoff.
The shuttle is essentially a glider during the hour-long
decent from orbit toward the landing strip. It is covered
by about 20,000 thermal tiles to protect against temperatures
as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,648 degrees Celsius).
NASA said the first indication of trouble Saturday was the
loss of temperature sensors in that wing's hydraulic system.
Along with Ramon, the shuttle - which was on its 28th mission -
carried commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission
specialists Dave Brown, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla and
payload commander Mike Anderson.
Ramon's presence on the flight resulted in an increase in
security, not only for Columbia's January 16 launch, but
also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his
presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.
But officials were quick to rule out the possibility of
terrorism. "There is no information that this was a terrorist
incident," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Homeland
Security Department. "Obviously the investigation is just
beginning but that is the information we have now."
"There's no reason to believe there are any links to terrorism
at this point, but we are fully investigating the situation,"
said a White House official, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
One senior government official said that at the altitude
the shuttle was flying when it broke up, it was out of range
of any surface-to-air missile.
In an interview with the daily Ma'ariv last month, Ramon
said: "The chances an accident would happen in space are
very small. As far as safety is concerned, I'm not concerned
at all ... I'm sorry, but I'm not afraid."
"During takeoff you are sitting on a barell of explosives
that contains two million liters of fuel. The shuttle consumes
4,000 liters a second during the first eight hours of takeoff,
until it starts orbiting around the earth," Ramon explained.
"In NASA, safety takes precedence over everything else.
The shuttle has backup upon backup upon backup."
'I heard a big bang and the windows shook'
A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said there had been some intelligence that raised
concerns about a previously scheduled flight of Columbia,
which was to have carried the same crew.
The intelligence, related to Ramon, was termed not credible,
but the flight was postponed for other reasons. There had
been no troubling intelligence regarding this flight,
officials said, and they do not believe terrorism was involved.
Local witnesses reported hearing a loud boom where the craft
appeared to break up, around 100 miles south of Dallas
and television footage showed multiple trails that could
reflect a shuttle breakup.
NASA mission control in Houston said, "Any debris that is
located in the Dallas-Fort Worth vicinity should be avoided
and may be hazardous due to the toxic nature of propellants
used on board the shuttle and should be reported to local
law enforcement authorities."
Gary Hunziker in Plano said he saw the shuttle flying
overhead. "I could see two bright objects flying off each
side of it," he told The Associated Press. "I just assumed
they were chase jets."
"I was getting ready to go out and I heard a big bang and
the windows shook in the house," said another local resident.
"I thought it was a sonic boom."
"The government of Israel and the people of Israel are praying
together with the entire world for the safety of the astronauts
on the shuttle Columbia," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office
said in a statement shortly after it emerged that contact
with the shuttle had been lost.
"The State of Israel and its citizens are as one at this
difficult time."
NASA earlier ordered flight controllers to pull out emergency
procedures and ordered them to retain all their records.
The crew completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit.
They studied ant, bee and spider behavior in weightlessness
as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took
measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli
cameras.
The shuttle flight was the 113th in the shuttle program's
22 years and the 28th flight for Columbia, NASA oldest shuttle.
First accident in descent to earth in 42 years of U.S.
spaceflight. The horrific end of shuttle mission STS-107
was a devastating blow to the nation's space program;
the Challenger explosion led to a 2-year moratorium on
launches, and Saturday's accident could bring construction
of the international space station to a standstill.
Shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said "there was no
indication of any impending threats to the vehicle." Then
there was a loss of data from temperature sensors on the
left wing, followed by a loss of data from tire pressure
indicators on the left main landing gear.
The final radio transmission between Mission Control and
the shuttle, at 9 a.m., (1400 GMT) gave no indication of
any trouble.
Mission Control radios: "Columbia, Houston, we see your
tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last."
Columbia's commander, Rick Husband, calmly responds:
"Roger, buh ..."
For several seconds, the transmission goes silent.
Then, there is static.
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, in her Dallas neighborhood,
said she heard a "boom, which I thought was the breaking of
the sound barrier" - and it may have been just that,
because the shuttle was traveling at 12,500 mph (20,112 kph),
18 times the speed of sound.
"The barn started shaking and we ran out and started looking
around," said Benjamin Laster of Kemp, Texas. "I saw a puff
of vapor and smoke and saw big chunk of material fall."
On the edge of downtown Nacogdoches, 135 miles (217 kilometers)
northeast of Houston, a National Guardsman stood watch over
a steel rod with silver bolts that landed in the grass outside
a yard. People streamed up to take photos of the debris.
Dentist Jeff Hancock said a metal bracket about a foot long
had crashed through his office roof. "It's all over Nacogdoches,"
said James Milford, owner of a barber shop in downtown. "There are several little pieces, some parts of machinery. ... There's been a lot of pieces about three feet (one meter) wide."
In 42 years of U.S. human spaceflight, there had never
been an accident during the descent to Earth or landing.
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A tribute to Ilan Ramon's legacy
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jrilsp90.jpg - picture of video conference
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