#Space shuttle columbia wiki series#

Shown here is a reconstruction of the space shuttle inside a facility with all the found pieces, to determine what caused its breakup on Feb. Yet little follow-through occurred with either the request for imagery, or the debris assessment team analysis.'ĭebris from space shuttle Columbia was collected and analyzed from across the southern United States. They even identified as a critical impact zone. 'Here, all the key managers were asking the right question and admitting the danger. 'Mission managers understood that the relevant question was not whether foam posed a safety-of-flight issue ⁠- it did ⁠- but rather whether the observed foam strike contained sufficient kinetic energy to cause damage that could lead to a burn-through,' CAIB wrote in the second volume of its report. Department of Defense for high-resolution 'spy satellite' imagery of the affected area, but rescinded it within 90 minutes, CAIB analysis determined. NASA had also issued a brief request to the U.S.

#Space shuttle columbia wiki series#

Related: Space shuttle Columbia's final mission (STS-107) in photosįoam shedding had happened numerous times before during shuttle launches, even though the shuttle system wasn't designed to do it CAIB officials suggested foam loss occurred on more than 80% of 79 missions 'for which imagery was available to confirm or rule out foam loss.'ĭuring Columbia's final flight, NASA engineers knew the foam had struck the shuttle's wing and several 'debris assessment' meetings were held, according to CAIB documentation based on a series of interviews and agency e-mails obtained by board members.

'Too often, accident investigations blame a failure only on the last step in a complex process, when a more comprehensive understanding of that process could reveal that earlier steps might be equally or even more culpable.' 'It is our view that complex systems almost always fail in complex ways, and we believe it would be wrong to reduce the complexities and weaknesses associated with these systems to some simple explanation,' CAIB members wrote in their introduction to the first volume. The falling foam caused a breach in the re-entry protection system needed to protect the crew as the shuttle came back into Earth's atmosphere.Īssociated with that technical issue was a series of related organizational problems such as a lack of vision, immense schedule pressure for launches, budget constraints and cutbacks to the agency's workforce, CAIB investigations found. 16, striking the leading edge of Columbia's left wing. Those causes are detailed in a six-volume report issued by the independent Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) later in 2003.Īccording to that board, the primary technical cause of the incident was a piece of foam insulation that fell loose from a 'bipod' (shuttle attachment) region of the external fuel tank during the flight's launch on Jan. Like all spacecraft accidents, the root causes of Columbia's and its crew's demise were complex.