The Columbia Report, Part 2

December 30, 2008

Having survived the initial breakup of the space shuttle, astronauts aboard Columbia were doomed by failed shoulder harnesses and helmets that allowed too much movement for the head, a new report about the 2003 U.S. space disaster released Tuesday finds.

But even if the safety gear had worked, the seven astronauts would have died due to the wind shear and extreme conditions in the upper atmosphere, as well as a parachute landing system that needed the crew conscious for manual operation.

So concludes a 400-page Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report, commissioned by NASA in an attempt to boil down the lessons learned from the tragedy into new equipment, techniques and perceptions that can be incorporated into future programs.

“Clearly the accident was not survivable under any circumstances, but (the report) will probably help for designing things for future spacecraft -- and maybe even aircraft,” said David Mould, NASA’s assistant administrator for public affairs.

The analysis is NASA’s most complete telling to date of the final minutes of the shuttle mission known as STS-107, which lifted off on Jan. 16, 2003, for a 16-day microgravity research mission that included, for the first time, an Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

He and his six crewmates -- commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool and astronauts Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark -- died aboard Columbia as the shuttle flew back to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for landing after what had been widely regarded as a successful and fairly glitch-free mission.

Unbeknownst to the astronauts or NASA, the shuttle had been critically damaged by a piece of foam debris that fell off its fuel tank during liftoff. The breach allowed superheated atmospheric gases to blast inside one of the wings during the high-speed glide back to Earth, melting the structure from the inside.

Much of what is in the report was discovered by the Columbia accident investigation team, which released a series of findings, as well as highly respected recommendations to guide the U.S. manned space program in the future. The panel advised retiring the space shuttles as soon as NASA finishes using them to complete construction of the space station, a position that has since been challenged.

Since the accident, NASA has flown 11 shuttle missions and has nine left in its schedule.

The Columbia Report, Part 1

There’s a story breaking today, thanks to my friend and colleague Gina Sunseri at ABC News, about the Columbia accident, the space tragedy that happened on Feb. 1, 2003.

It is a report, literally years in the making, by a group of experts from NASA and outside sources who were asked to perform “a comprehensive analysis of the accident, focusing on factors and events affecting crew survival,” according to a draft release of the summary.

The full report will be released at noon, with a conference call for reporters to follow at 4.

It will be a sad note to end the year (assuming nothing is forthcoming from NASA tomorrow), with details about how much time the crew had available to grasp the reality of their situation.

“Clearly, the accident was not survivable under any circumstances,” said NASA spokesman David Mould, “but it will probably help for designing things for future spacecraft and maybe even aircraft.”

The timing of the report is peculiar, coming between the Christmas and New Years holidays.

Mould advised not reading too much into that, but later added, “The timing was coordinated to some degree with the families of the astronauts. We work with them to make sure things like timing was good for them. We want to be sensitive to those folks.”