On 31 January, the day before Columbia was due to land, engineer Kevin McCluney offered a hypothetical description to his colleagues at the Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) flight control team of the kind of data “signature” they could expect to receive in the event that the worst should happen. Let’s suppose, said McCluney, that a large hole had been punched through one of the shuttle’s RCC panels, enabling super-heated plasma to enter the airframe. “Let’s surmise,” he told them, “what sort of signature we’d see if a limited stream of plasma did get into the wheel well [of Columbia’s main landing gear], roughly from entry interface until about 200,000 feet (60 km); in other words, a 10–15-minute window.” Little could McCluney possibly have guessed that his “signature” would almost exactly mirror the dreadful events which befell Columbia on the morning of Saturday, 1 February 2003.
February 1, 2003 - Following a successful 15 day, 22 hour mission consisting of mostly scientific experiments, Space Shuttle Columbia is destroyed during re-entry over the southwestern United States, resulting in the deaths of her seven crew.
These were Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon.
During the launch of STS-107 on January 16, a piece of foam insulation broke from the external tank, striking the port-side wing and breaching the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon panels that experience some of the most intense heat during re-entry. This was the fatal blow that would prevent Columbia and her crew from returning home at Kennedy.
The loss of Columbia signaled the beginning of the end of the Space Transportation System, and the United States would be left without a manned space vehicle for years to come.
However, the change brought by the loss of the Shuttle meant a new gap to be filled by the private sector companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Sierra Nevada Corp, among others, that could focus on the resupply of the ISS with crew and cargo, allowing NASA to shift it’s focus to developing a new crewed vehicle to continue a mission of exploration of our solar system.
“The cause of which they died will continue. Mankind was led into the darkness beyond our world with the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.”
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