Vapor trails from debris of the space shuttle Columbia were seen over Tyler, Texas, yesterday. The shuttle was returning to Florida after a 16-day mission when it exploded 200,000 feet above the Lone Star state. Dr. Scott Lieberman photo via Associated Press

COLUMBIA LOST
U.S. mourns loss of Columbia crew

By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post

The shuttle Columbia, returning to Earth after a 16-day scientific journey through space, disintegrated yesterday high above the central Texas plains, killing seven astronauts who had dedicated their lives to exploring the heavens.

The seven members of the space shuttle Columbia were killed yesterday after the spacecraft broke apart 200,000 feet above Texas. NASA photo

The Columbia, the oldest shuttle in the U.S. fleet, was streaking through the sky at 12,500 mph when it burst into flames about 4 a.m. Hawai'i time, shortly after re-entering Earth's atmosphere. The crew of six Americans and the first Israeli astronaut was scheduled to land in Florida about 15 minutes later.

It was not clear last night what caused the Columbia's demise so close to home, but with the world bracing for war in Iraq U.S. officials said they saw nothing to suggest foul play.

There were a few possible indications of mechanical trouble from shuttle sensors in the minutes before the disaster, but the mission director said the Columbia was still "flying with no problems at that time," 39 miles above Earth.

Then there was a tremendous bang and a burst of light, before the plume of white smoke trailing the shuttle thickened, fractured and melted away.

But Bush vowed that "our journey into space will go on," and NASA's Bill Readdy said the victims' grieving families want that as well.

"They knew that the crew was absolutely dedicated to the mission that they were performing," said Readdy, a former shuttle commander who is now NASA's deputy administrator for space flight. "They said that we must find what happened and fix it and move on. We can't let their sacrifice be in vain."

This was the Columbia's 28th mission. Its first, in 1981, launched the space shuttle program.

The crew had worked on more than 80 microgravity experiments designed to help treat prostate cancer, predict earthquakes, suppress fires and develop new products ranging from paints to perfumes. They had studied the effects of weightlessness on spiders, fish and silkworms in experiments designed by students in Melbourne, Australia; Beijing; and Tokyo. They also studied themselves, swallowing calcium tracers and drawing their blood to help track bone loss and protein production in space.

Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon had put together a high-tech project to observe a dust plume over the Mediterranean, and then used a camera to snap rare photographs of lightning phenomena known as "sprites" and "elves."

The mission had encountered one glitch during liftoff, when a chunk of insulating foam from the external fuel tank detached and apparently struck the shuttle's left wing. NASA officials had pronounced the damage insignificant, but yesterday, after the first signs of trouble came when sensors on that same wing stopped transmitting data, investigators said the issue would be studied closely.

Controllers also noticed a minor electrical current spike in a water distribution system a few days into the mission, and later shut down an identical system after it sprang a leak, but there were no indications that the problems were serious.

Even the final radio transmissions to and from the shuttle suggested possible concern but no imminent danger. "We see your tire pressure messages, and we did not copy your last," said Mission Control in Houston. Mission commander Rick Husband calmly replied: "Roger," but his transmission cut off in mid-word. There was silence, and then static.

"We will not fly again until we have this understood," shuttle chief Ron Dittemore said at a news briefing in Houston. "Somewhere along the line, we missed something."

Judith Limtiaco of Mililani and a sellout crowd at the Stan Sheriff Center observed a moment of silence last night in memory of the seven astronauts who died. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

Shuttle launches stopped making front-page news years ago, but yesterday offered a jarring reminder that there is nothing routine about space, or the men and women who go there. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe described the lost crew as "an extraordinary, extraordinary group of astronauts," and everyone who spoke publicly was visibly shaken.

"They dedicated their lives to pushing the scientific challenges for all of us here on Earth," O'Keefe said. "The loss of this valiant crew is something we will never be able to get over."

Mission commander Rick Husband, 45, an Air Force fighter pilot from Amarillo, Texas, left behind a wife and two children. Co-pilot William McCool, 41, a Navy aviator from Lubbock, Texas, was on his first voyage into space. Anderson, 43, a devout Christian, became the first black to visit a space station in 1998 when he traveled to Mir on the shuttle Endeavour. Mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, 41, an aerospace engineer, became the first native of India in space in 1997. Mission specialist David Brown, 46, a Navy flight surgeon, once performed as a circus acrobat and unicyclist. Laurel Clark, 41, a former pediatrician who also was a flight surgeon, had lost a cousin in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The explosion created a shattering bang that was heard as far away as Arkansas, and scattered a shower of fiery — and potentially toxic — debris from the shuttle across a 500-square-mile swath of eastern Texas and western Louisiana. Chunks of metal crashed into back yards, parking lots and pine forests, as well as a dentist's office, a reservoir and a rooftop. In Hemphill, Texas, human remains were found in a wooded area.

In the college town of Nacogdoches, Texas, about 200 residents and 11 news trucks milled around a small piece of debris in a bank parking lot. Several compared the sound of the shuttle that had passed overhead to rolling thunder, an earthquake or a plane flying too low.

Nury Serling wipes away tears at the space center in Houston after hearing of the tragedy. Associated Press

"It's a broken-up piece of whatever it is, purple on one side and burned on one side," he said.

Now NASA will face its most serious crisis since the late 1980s, when the Challenger disaster and several mishaps surrounding the Hubble Telescope prompted a rethinking of the agency's mission. In recent years, the agency had discontinued a space-jet program that was seen as a possible successor to the shuttle, but some experts had warned that the shuttle program was dangerously short on money and maintenance.

Three American astronauts are living on the $95 billion international space station, and they had been planning to catch a shuttle back to Earth later this year. NASA officials said they are not worried about getting the astronauts home — a Russian vehicle at the station could take them back at any time — but they said the investigation into the loss of the Columbia will have important repercussions for the future of American exploration.

Still, everyone involved with the space program pledged that the march into the unknown will continue, just as they did after the Challenger went down. At the time, President Ronald Reagan gave perhaps the most stirring speech of his presidency in honor of six astronauts and one teacher, concluding that "we will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God."

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