Nigel Packham, Associate Director, Safety and Mission Assurance, NASA Johnson Space Center
On February 1st 2003, early on a crisp, sunny Winter’s morning, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the skies of Texas taking with her the lives of all seven crewmembers aboard. The crew of Columbia had spent the previous 16 days in space performing ground-breaking science experiments and was anticipating a happy reunification with family and friends after they landed at Kennedy Space Center later that day. It was not to be. The fate of Columbia and her precious crew was sealed as soon as the commitment to the de-orbit burn was given to drop them out of low Earth orbit.
Many will question why, after over 20 years have passed since that fateful day, we still continue to communicate the events that led up to and which progressed during Columbia’s atmospheric entry.
Ironically perhaps, now is the most opportune time to do so. Today’s commercial space industry is expanding at an alarming rate, not just in the area of payload deployment in the near Earth region, but in response to much, much wider and loftier destinations. Proposed designs for flying astronauts are appearing, it would seem, almost daily. If providers of such services are unaware of the details behind the tragic lessons that we, NASA, have learned, then no-one can expect that the same mistakes will not happen over and over again. Since the accident, a small group of the investigation team have given the presentation to over 85,000 people world-wide in an attempt to spread the word as widely as possible.
This presentation examines what happened to the crew and the crew module of Columbia during entry. It does not address the cause of the accident. That was more than adequately addressed by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, formed on the day of the accident as a Presidential Commission. It will examine the five events that occurred post de-orbit burn that had lethal potential. By evaluating each event in turn, a picture of crew survivability for future accidents can be painted. Of course, the Columbia crew experienced all five events from which there was no hope of survival.
Should you wish to read about the investigation in detail, please go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/298870main_SP-2008-565.pdf
