by Forty-three years to the day after the space shuttle Columbia landed from its first mission, CNN is set to air a four-part series on the orbiter’s unexpected final return to Earth.
“Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight”, a new documentary co-produced by the BBC and Mindhouse Productions, looks back at the 28th mission of the winged space shuttle, STS-107, which ended in tragedy on February 1, 2003. The program includes new features. interviews with family members of the fallen astronauts and with some of the NASA managers and engineers who supported the flight and later helped learn why Columbia and its crew were lost.
“If you work in human spaceflight, this is the worst thing that could ever happen,” says astronaut Ellen Ochoa in the third episode of “Final Flight.” Ochoa was in Mission Control when Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the atmosphere after a successful 16-day science mission in Earth orbit.
The first two hours of “Final Flight” debuted last Sunday (April 7) and aired again on Saturday (April 13) beginning at 8 pm EDT/PDT. CNN will then simulcast the other two programs the following day, coinciding with the anniversary of the 1981 landing of the shuttle Columbia on STS-1.
Related: Columbia Is Lost: STS-107 Archives Space.com
As the documentary reveals, the issue surrounding Columbia’s fate was known to NASA engineers from almost the first day of the orbiter’s flight. Foam covering the shuttle’s outer tank and its attachment points to the spacecraft would fall off during launch and, depending on when and where those breaks occurred, the foam could impact the orbiter and cause damage him.
It was just such an occurrence that left a hole in the leading edge of Columbia’s left wing, allowing hot plasma to threaten the integrity of the orbiter’s airframe, which then triggered the breakup of the spacecraft and the death of the STS-107 crew. . , commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Laurel Clark, David Brown, Michael Anderson and Kalpana Chawla and Israeli payload specialist Ilan Ramon.
“I didn’t know at the time that anything related to him had happened,” says Sandra Anderson, Michíl’s wife. “There were people who did, however.”
Related: The Columbia disaster: What happened and what NASA learned
As the accident investigation showed, NASA engineers were aware of the foam strike soon after it occurred on January, 16, 2003, and immediately began to question whether it posed a risk to the safety of the vehicle and crew. Rodney Rocha, who was the shuttle’s chief structural engineer, was among those who requested and were denied the use of military assets, aka spy satellites, to provide the images needed to determine the severity of the damage. from providing foam impact.
“I was recounting all the pushback we were getting from management, two weeks of complete frustration and anger,” Rocha said, describing a conversation he had with his wife the night before Columbia’s re-entry .
The NASA managers who dismissed Rocha’s concerns and dismissed the foam as the cause of the tragedy still could not be interviewed even after the loss of Columbia and therefore were not interviewed for “Final Flight,” according to CNN.
In addition to focusing on the cause of the tragedy, “Final Flight” also profiles the STS-107 astronauts through the memories shared by spouses and children, as well as the last footage taken of them aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Mark Kelly, who is now a senator in the United States, is also interviewed because some of the team members were his friends, having been selected together to become astronauts.
Kelly was also the first person from NASA to arrive in East Texas, where the debris from Columbia and the remains of the crew had fallen from the sky.
“There were pieces of the space shuttle, thousands and thousands of pieces all over the place,” says Kelly. “This was not something I was trained for.”
“Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight” (previously released in the UK as “The Space Shuttle That Fell to Earth”) concludes with a look at the legacy of the space shuttle and what NASA is doing to ensure that the crew STS-107 death was not in vain.
“Our audience has long been fascinated by space exploration stories,” Amy Entelis, executive vice president at CNN Worldwide, said in a statement. “This chapter in the space shuttle program captured the nation’s attention and is just as compelling in the retelling.”
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