Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster

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On Feb. 1 2003, seven astronauts lost their lives when the space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth. This was the second space shuttle disaster after the Challenger blew up during launch in 1986. Shuttle operations were interrupted by Challenger's demise. It wouldn't be until 1989 that Columbia flew again. But before that the Columbia flew once more in November 1983, carrying the Spacelab experiment module for the first time as well as the first European Space Agency astronaut. Columbia was then shelved for major upgrades before flying just one mission in 1986; that mission carried Democrat Bill Nelson on board, among the astronauts. The Columbia disaster directly led to the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011. In a way Columbia was different from the previous shuttles because it was the first space shuttle to fly in space in 1981 and it was NASA's oldest shuttle. Columbia spend a total time of 300 days, 17 hours, 40 minutes, and 22 seconds. Columbia completed 27 successful missions before its disaster. Its 28 mission was just purely for …show more content…
Rick Husband, commander; Michael Anderson, payload commander; David Brown, mission specialist; Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist; Laurel Clark, mission specialist; William McCool, pilot; and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist from the Israeli Space Agency were on the shuttle. Six of the astronauts were married and five of them had kids. Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-born woman in space. Ramon was a 48-year-old Israeli Air Force colonel who survived two wars. He carried a drawing titled "Moon Landscape" by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy killed at Auschwitz. Also, there are seven asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter that now bear the crew's names. In addition, two members of a helicopter crew engaged in the search were killed in a crash the following

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