The Columbia Disaster Was Worse Than You Thought

The fiery disintegration of Columbia ultimately led to the loss of lives and the retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet. But as it turns out, there's more to the story that makes it so much worse, because it didn't need to happen in the first place.

Columbia's 28th trip into space had been delayed for two full years due to various issues, but when it finally lifted off on January 16, 2003, it took just 81 seconds for disaster to strike. That's when a piece of foam from the external fuel tank came off and damaged the shuttle's left wing.

According to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the foam chunk was about two feet long and a foot wide, and it hit the wing's heat-resistant panels at a relative speed of roughly 500 miles per hour. However, nobody at the time noticed, it wasn't until the following day that the foam strike was seen during a review of the launch.

Foam striking the orbiter during liftoff had actually been a concern since even before the shuttle first flew in 1981. Following that first flight, over 300 heat-resistant panels had to be replaced due to damage from debris. And it wasn't an isolated incident, most shuttle launches also had foam impacts.

But the damage to the Columbia was different: rather than hitting the more fragile white or black tiles, the foam struck the reinforced grey carbon tiles on the leading edge of the wing, which were thought to be more or less indestructible. So conventional wisdom said that a foam strike to those tiles couldn't possibly cause significant damage to the shuttle, an assumption that turned out to be deadly.

Watch the video for more about why The Columbia Disaster Was Worse Than You Thought.

#NASA #Columbia

Doomed from the start | 0:14
No further investigation | 1:25
Crew kept in the dark | 2:22
Tragedy | 2:56
A tragedy compounded | 3:53
The crew could have been saved | 4:49

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