Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

On February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere over Texas and Louisiana, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was the second of two Space Shuttle missions to end in disaster, after the loss of Challenger and crew in 1986.

The mission, designated STS-107, was the 28th flight for the orbiter and the 113th flight of the Space Shuttle fleet. It was dedicated to research in various fields, mainly on board the SpaceHab module inside the shuttle's payload bay.

During launch, a piece of the insulating foam broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the thermal protection system tiles on the orbiter's left wing. Similar foam shedding had occurred during previous Space Shuttle launches, causing damage that ranged from minor to near-catastrophic, but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious. When Columbia re-entered the atmosphere of Earth, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the orbiter to become unstable and break apart.

After the disaster, Space Shuttle flight operations were suspended for more than two years, as they had been after the Challenger disaster. Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) was paused until flights resumed in July2005 with STS-114. NASA made several technical and organizational changes to subsequent missions, including the addition of an on-orbit inspection to determine how well the orbiter's thermal protection system (TPS) had endured the ascent, and continual readiness of designated rescue missions in case irreparable damage was found. Except for one mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, subsequent Space Shuttle missions were flown only to the ISS to allow the crew to use it as a haven if damage to the orbiter prevented safe re-entry. The remaining three orbiters were retired after the building of the ISS was completed.