It was an early morning on the International Space Station on February 1, 2003. Two of the three astronauts aboard were sleeping in. It was a Saturday morning and after a long week, Ken Bowersox and Nikolai Budarin, part of the Expedition 6 crew, wanted to sleep in. But one of them, Don Pettit, was awake enjoying his morning coffee while watching the Earth out the window. As the space station sailed over the United States, Pettit remembered something, today his friends onboard the space shuttle Columbia would be returning. But then his attention was drawn back to the incredible view, he saw all the great cities on the west coast. L.A., Phoenix, and Houston. It was very bright above Texas, so it shielded Pettit's view of a horrible disaster; he never saw the flames as the shuttle with all his friends disappeared above the blue sky. 

STS-107 

On January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia lifted off the launch pad with her crew. The mission was dubbed STS-107 it was a two-week mission that involved studying how DNA reacts to the space environment. The crew consisted of David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, and William McCool. The first astronaut from Israel, Ilan Ramon, was part of the crew; he was an air force fighter pilot and once part of an intense battle in the skies. The astronauts were supposed to land back on Earth on February 1. 

A Problem 

The launch was flawless, except for one minor factor. During the launch, a piece of insulating foam fell off the orange external tank and struck the shuttle's left wing. The falling foam was caught on tape and discovered after a replay of the launch video. Some people thought that this was a very bad situation because the shuttle had tiles that protected Columbia on its fiery reentry through the atmosphere, which seemed to be possibly damaged, if that was so then the shuttle would burn up. But to other people, it wasn’t a worry at all. In the video, it looked like the foam had bounced harmlessly off. So the problem was dismissed. No NASA officials were told about the problem, and the crew aboard the shuttle was never notified about the possible damage. 

A Strong Connection

Don Pettit was on board the ISS well before the launch of STS-107, and very quickly we started talking with the crew via radio. At first, they just talked about their missions and what they were discovering, but after a while, they started to talk about their personal lives. And soon they even started to play chess together, Pettit would set up the board on the ISS and McCool would email the ISS from Columbia his moves with the pieces. It was fun to pass the time, the astronauts got closer to each other. Little did Pettit know but, in a matter of days his friends would be gone. And he would be alone in space with his two other crewmates wondering “Why did you go?” 

The Night Before Disaster 

 The night before the landing, the crewmates were getting ready, and the experiments were shut down and packed up. The space shuttle was pointed in a position that would take it down from orbit the next day. But before the crew slept they decided to call a good friend of theirs who was back on Earth. Astronaut Mike Massimino, who was at the time currently going through CAPCOM training. Massimino recalled the call he had with the crew in his autobiography Spaceman

“How's it up there?” he asked 

“Oh, Mass,” Laurel Clark responded, calling him by his nickname, “It's not good. I don’t think you should ever come back,” she joked.

They talked back and forth for a while until their time was up, so the commander Rick Husband ended by saying, “We really appreciate you, for taking time out of your day to come and talk with us, thanks so much. It's great to talk with you, and we look forward to seeing you when we get back.”

Massimino hung up the call and went home, not knowing that besides the CAPCOM who was on duty, he was the last person on Earth that would speak to the crew. 

The Lost Voyagers 

Columbia was supposed to touch down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It had been done several times, to the American space program, and landing wasn’t a big deal. The Soviets had lost some people when they were landing. But in America’s history, it wasn’t a big deal. The landing was happening early in the morning, so unless space lovers wanted to tune in on NASA television, it would be another typical mission for the space shuttle. But as the space shuttle descended down to Earth, the crew noticed something was wrong. The tire pressure in one of the shuttle's huge landing wheels was low. Meaning that the tire was melting. Rick Husband reported the news to mission control, but before he could report anything else, he was cut off. When something re-enters Earth’s atmosphere it creates a cloud of plasma that radio signals can’t get through. It normally means 30 minutes blackout, between the crew and mission control. But when the 30 minutes were up, the crew didn’t respond to the ground’s calls.

“Columbia, Houston. Comm check.” 

Nothing but silence.

“Columbia, Houston. Comm check.”

Static hissed back, but no response.  

“Columbia, Houston. Comm check.”

Nothing. 

More hopeless calls went out. 

 This continued until the flight director made the call that no one at NASA ever wants to make. “Close the doors,” he said, putting his hands on his head, trying to hide the sadness and tears that filled his eyes.  

 But what he meant by ‘closing the doors’ was, “We lost them,”  

The True Meaning Of Space

After the disaster, Congress cut off millions of dollars from NASA’s budget, and to this day, they are still recovering. The space shuttle program was grounded, and many people said that it would never fly again. The crew on the ISS that was supposed to come down to Earth the next month in March on a space shuttle, had to wait until May when a Russian Soyuz capsule came to their rescue. NASA teams spent months searching for what went wrong with the disaster. And they confirmed that the ‘harmless piece of foam’ caused the whole disaster. All the damage was caused by a piece of foam. But then more people rewatched past launch videos, foam was coming off the External Tank (ET) almost every launch! It looked like the end for the space shuttle, but NASA was sure that they could still use it for one more goal, to complete the ISS. So NASA addressed all the problems, they made the insulating stick with a killer grip to the ET. Another problem was blind spots on the space shuttle, during launch. There weren’t enough cameras. So NASA stuffed the shuttle with HD cameras. All the known problems with the shuttle were fixed. And in July 2005 the space shuttle Discovery lifted off. However, during that launch, some foam broke off and the shuttle took a hit, after it docked with the ISS, images were taken and it didn’t look threatening, too many people at NASA it was pure luck that the shuttle got back on the ground. The shuttle was grounded for another year, fortunately, the shuttle got back to normal flights in 2006.  

But as extra precautions the rest of the shuttle missions would only fly to the ISS or the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). And damage had been done and there was no recovering, the shuttle would retire in the summer of 2011. 

As we continue to advance our understanding of space, we must remember what happens when we get too ahead of ourselves. And remember what happened in the sky on that winter day in 2003.