The Ghost of Columbia Still Haunts Starship's Heat Shield
A broken heat shield doomed Columbia. SpaceX's Starship rebuilt it with a steel hull and pinned hexagonal tiles, but experts say rapid reuse is still unsolved.
The tragedy of Columbia (STS-107)
I was a kid who memorized orbiter names the way other kids memorized NBA rosters. Columbia was the first to fly in space: the one that flew STS-1 in 1981, the heaviest of the fleet, the one with the black chines where its wings met the fuselage. On the morning of February 1, 2003, it was coming home from a 16-day science mission with seven people on board: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon.
At about 8:44 a.m. EST, Columbia hit the top of the atmosphere over the Pacific. At 8:59, Mission Control lost contact. People in Texas watched the orbiter break into a spray of bright streaks across the...
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