20 Years On, How the Columbia Shuttle Disaster Changed Space Travel

Folks around NASA don’t much care for this time of year. It was 56 years ago last week—January 27, 1967—that astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee lost their lives in a launch pad fire inside their Apollo 1 spacecraft as they were running a dress rehearsal for countdown. It was 37 years ago—on January 28, 1986—that the shuttle Challenger exploded during launch due to a faulty seal that caused one of the solid rocket boosters to ignite the external fuel tank. The pair of solid boosters flew on heedlessly, leaving a gruesome, two fingered fireball in the sky as seven astronauts perished, including New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Seventeen years later, on January 28, 2003, astronaut Rick Husband, commander of the shuttle Columbia, which was then in orbit, marked the anniversaries. “They made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said, “giving their lives for their country and mankind. Their dedication was an inspiration to each of us.” America would have to find a similar kind of grim inspiration just four days later, when, on February 1—20 years ago today—Columbia met an end similar to Challenger’s, breaking apart during reentry, when hot plasma tore through the spacecraft from a breach in the leading edge of the left wing. Husband and his crew of six were killed, as the shuttle, on its way to a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news