STS-107 was the 113th flight of the

Space Shuttle program The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its ...

, and the 28th and final flight of Space Shuttle ''Columbia''. The mission launched from

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

in Florida on January 16, 2003, and during its 15 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes, 32 seconds in

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...

conducted a multitude of international scientific experiments. It was also the 88th post-

Challenger disaster On January 28, 1986, the broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39a.m. EST (16:39 UTC). It was ...

mission. An in-flight break up during

reentry Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. There are two main types of atmospheric entry: ''uncontrolled entry'', such as the entr ...

into the

atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...

on February 1 killed all seven crew members and disintegrated ''Columbia''. Immediately after the disaster, NASA convened the ''Columbia'' accident Investigation Board to determine the cause of the disintegration. The source of the failure was determined to have been caused by a piece of

foam Foams are materials formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid. A bath sponge and the head on a glass of beer are examples of foams. In most foams, the volume of gas is large, with thin films of liquid or solid separating the reg ...

that broke off during launch and damaged the thermal protection system ( reinforced carbon-carbon panels and thermal protection tiles) on the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. During re-entry the damaged wing slowly overheated and came apart, eventually leading to loss of control and disintegration of the vehicle. The cockpit window frame is now exhibited in a memorial inside the Space Shuttle ''

Atlantis Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'' ...

'' Pavilion at the Kennedy Space Center. The damage to the thermal protection system on the wing was similar to that ''

'' had sustained in 1988 during

STS-27 STS-27 was the 27th NASA Space Shuttle mission, and the third flight of Space Shuttle ''Atlantis''. Launching on December 2, 1988, on a four-day mission, it was the second shuttle flight after the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' disaster of Janu ...

, the second mission after the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' disaster. However, the damage on STS-27 occurred at a spot that had more robust metal (a thin steel plate near the landing gear), and that mission survived the re-entry.

Mission highlights

STS-107 carried the

SPACEHAB Astrotech Corporation, formerly Spacehab Inc., is a technology incubator headquartered in Austin, Texas. Astrotech uses technology sourced internally and from research institutions, government laboratories, and universities to fund, manage and s ...

Double Research Module on its inaugural flight, the Freestar experiment (mounted on a

Hitchhiker Program The Hitchhiker Program (HH) was a NASA program established in 1984 and administered by the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The program was designed to allow low-cost and quick reactive experiments t ...

rack), and the

Extended Duration Orbiter The Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) program was a project by NASA to prepare for long-term (months) microgravity research aboard Space Station Freedom, which later evolved into the International Space Station. Scientists and NASA needed practical ...

pallet. SPACEHAB was first flown on STS-57. One of the experiments, a video taken to study atmospheric

dust Dust is made of fine particles of solid matter. On Earth, it generally consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil lifted by wind (an aeolian process), volcanic eruptions, and pollution. Dust in homes ...

, may have detected a new atmospheric phenomenon, dubbed a "TIGER" (Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red). On board ''Columbia'' was a copy of a drawing by

Petr Ginz Petr Ginz (1 February 1928 – 28 September 1944) was a Czechoslovak boy of partial Jewish background who was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp (known as Terezín, in Czech) during the Holocaust. He was murdered at the age of si ...

, the editor-in-chief of the magazine ''

Vedem ''Vedem'' (''e AreIn the Lead'') was a Czech-language literary magazine that existed from 1942 to 1944 in the Terezín concentration camp, during the Holocaust. It was hand-produced by a group of boys living in the Home One barracks, among them e ...

'', who depicted what he imagined the Earth looked like from the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

when he was a 14-year-old prisoner in the

Terezín Terezín (; german: Theresienstadt) is a town in Litoměřice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,800 inhabitants. It is a former military fortress composed of the citadel and adjacent walled garrison town ...

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

. The copy was in the possession of

Ilan Ramon Ilan Ramon ( he, אילן רמון; , born Ilan Wolfferman ; June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003) was an Israeli fighter pilot and later the first Israeli astronaut. Ramon was a Space Shuttle payload specialist of STS-107, the fatal mission of ...

and was lost in the disintegration. Ramon also traveled with a dollar bill received from the

Lubavitcher Rebbe Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups ...

. An Australian experiment, created by students from

Glen Waverley Secondary College Glen Waverley Secondary College is a non-selective public government school located in Glen Waverley, Victoria, Australia. It is one of the largest secondary schools in Victoria, with 1,979 students and 158 teachers as of 2017. In addition, t ...

, was designed to test the reaction of zero gravity on the web formation of the Australian garden orb weaver spider.

Major experiments

Examples of some of the experiments and investigations on the mission. In SPACEHAB RDM: *9 commercial payloads with 21 investigations, *4 payloads for the European Space Agency with 14 investigations *1 payload for ISS Risk Mitigation *18 payloads NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) with 23 investigations In the payload bay attached to RDM: *Combined Two-Phase Loop Experiment (COM2PLEX), *Miniature Satellite Threat Reporting System (MSTRS) *Star Navigation (STARNAV). FREESTAR *Critical Viscosity of Xenon- 2 (CVX-2) *Low Power Transceiver (LPT) *Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) * Space Experiment Module (SEM- 14) *Solar Constant Experiment-3 (SOLCON-3) *Shuttle Ozone Limb Sounding Experiment (SOLSE-2) Additional payloads *Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust Experiment (SIMPLEX) *Ram Burn Observation (RAMBO). Because much of the data was transmitted during the mission, there was still large return on the mission objectives even though it was lost on re-entry. NASA estimated that 30% of the total science data was saved and collected through telemetry back to ground stations. Around 5-10% more data was saved and collected through recovering samples and hard drives intact on the ground after the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster, increasing the total data of saved experiments despite the disaster from 30% to 35-40%.NASA.gov
. Retrieved December 5, 2020 About 5-6 ''Columbia'' payloads encompassing many experiments were successfully recovered in the debris field. Scientists and engineers were able to recover 99% of the data for one of the six FREESTAR experiments, Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2), that flew unpressurized in the payload bay during the mission after recovering the

viscometer A viscometer (also called viscosimeter) is an instrument used to measure the viscosity of a fluid. For liquids with viscosities which vary with flow conditions, an instrument called a rheometer is used. Thus, a rheometer can be considered as a spe ...

and hard drive damaged but fully intact in the debris field in Texas. NASA recovered a commercial payload, Commercial Instrumentation Technology Associates (ITA) Biomedical Experiments-2 (CIBX-2), and ITA was able to increase the total data saved from STS-107 from 0% to 50% for this payload. This experiment studied treatments for cancer, and the

micro-encapsulation Microencapsulation is a process in which tiny particles or droplets are surrounded by a coating to give small capsules, with useful properties. In general, it is used to incorporate food ingredients, enzymes, cells or other materials on a micro m ...

experiment part of the payload was completely recovered, increasing from 0% data to 90% data after recovering the samples fully intact for this experiment. In this same payload were numerous crystal-forming experiments by hundreds of elementary and middle school students from all across the United States. Miraculously most of their experiments were found intact in CIBX-2, increasing from 0% data to 100% fully recovered data. The BRIC-14 (moss growth experiment) and BRIC-60 (

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (ro ...

ringworm experiment) samples were found intact in the debris field within a radius in east Texas. 80-87% of these live organisms survived the catastrophe. The moss and ringworms experiments' original primary mission was not nominal due to the lack of having the samples immediately after landing in its original state (they were discovered many months after the crash), but these samples helped the scientific community greatly in the field of

astrobiology Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investig ...

and helped form new theories about microorganisms surviving a long trip in outer space while traveling on meteorites or asteroids.

Unsuccessful re-entry

''Columbia'' began re-entry as planned, but the heat shield was compromised due to damage sustained during the initial ascent. The heat of re-entry was free to spread into the damaged portion of the orbiter, ultimately causing its disintegration and the loss of all hands. The accident triggered a 7-month investigation and a search for debris, and over 85,000 pieces were collected over the course of the initial investigation. This amounted to roughly 38 percent of the orbiter vehicle.

Crew

Insignia

The mission insignia itself is the only patch of the shuttle program that is entirely shaped in the orbiter's outline. The central element of the patch is the

microgravity The term micro-g environment (also μg, often referred to by the term microgravity) is more or less synonymous with the terms ''weightlessness'' and ''zero-g'', but emphasising that g-forces are never exactly zero—just very small (on the I ...

symbol, ''µg'', flowing into the rays of the

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

symbol. The mission

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...

is portrayed by the 39-degree angle of the astronaut symbol to the Earth's

horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...

. The sunrise is representative of the numerous experiments that are the dawn of a new era for continued microgravity research on the International Space Station and beyond. The breadth of science and the exploration of space is illustrated by the Earth and stars. The

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

Columba Columba or Colmcille; gd, Calum Cille; gv, Colum Keeilley; non, Kolban or at least partly reinterpreted as (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is toda ...

(the

dove Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

) was chosen to symbolize

peace Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups. ...

on Earth and the Space Shuttle ''Columbia''. The seven stars also represent the mission crew members and honor the original astronauts who paved the way to make research in space possible. Six stars have five points, the seventh has six points like a

Star of David The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles. A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...

, symbolizing the Israeli Space Agency's contributions to the mission. An

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

flag A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...

is adjacent to the name of Payload Specialist Ramon, who was the first Israeli in space. The crew insignia or 'patch' design was initiated by crew members Dr. Laurel Clark and Dr. Kalpana Chawla. First-time crew member Clark provided most of the design concepts as Chawla led the design of her maiden voyage STS-87 insignia. Clark also pointed out that the dove in the Columba constellation was mythologically connected to the explorers

the Argonauts ''The Argonauts'' is a book by poet and critic Maggie Nelson, published in 2015. It mixes philosophical theory with memoir. The book discusses her romantic relationship with the transgender artist Harry Dodge leading to her pregnancy as well as t ...

who released the dove.

Gallery

STS-107, Space Shuttle Columbia launch.ogg, Launch video. Close-up STS-107 Launch - GPN-2003-00080.jpg, Launch of STS-107 from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. STS-107-sleeping-crew.jpg, Mission STS-107 crew in bunk beds on the middeck of the Space Shuttle. STS-107 Cockpit Video 3.jpg, Reentry video frame. STS107-E-5311.JPG, View of the atmosphere and of the Moon. Mount Fuji from space (shuttle mission).jpg, A view of

Mount Fuji , or Fugaku, located on the island of Honshū, is the highest mountain in Japan, with a summit elevation of . It is the second-highest volcano located on an island in Asia (after Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra), and seventh-highest p ...

and the surrounding area from ''Columbia'' Columbia's Main Engine Powerheads - GPN-2003-00076.jpg, Part of one of ''Columbia''s main engines later recovered.

References

Literature

* William H. Starbuck, Moshe Farjoun (Eds.): ''Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster.'' Blackwell, Malden 2005, .

External links

NASA's Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' and Her Crew
*
Article: Astronaut Laurel Clark from Racine, WI
Detailed

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

status reports for each day of the mission. {{Use American English, date=January 2014 Space accidents and incidents in the United States Space Shuttle Columbia disaster Space Shuttle missions Space program fatalities Spacecraft launched in 2003 Articles containing video clips February 2003 events 2003 in Texas January 2003 events 2003 in Louisiana Kalpana Chawla