Space shuttle columbia debris12/18/2023 Mark Drela, an aerodynamics researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), still suspects that tile damage was the culprit. The problem may have originated elsewhere on the shuttle. The data suggest “there’s some other missing link that we don’t have yet,” Dittemore said Feb. EST was small compared with the 2,500F temperature that some parts of the shuttle’s exterior endured, as expected, as the craft plunged through Earth’s atmosphere at more than 18 times the speed of sound. He notes that the relatively modest warming recorded over a 6-minute period beginning at 8:52 a.m. In that case, and on at least one similar occurrence on another shuttle, engineers correctly predicted that dislodged tiles would not lead to a catastrophe.ĭittemore cautions that the loss of tiles, despite coming under early suspicion as the cause for the crash, may have nothing to do with the disaster. On Columbia’s maiden journey in April 1981, some 15 tiles were thought to have loosened when foam from a fuel tank struck just after liftoff. Tiles have frequently come loose on the space shuttle fleet but have never caused a crash. “We want to know if we made any erroneous assumptions.” “We are completely redoing the analysis from scratch,” said shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston at a Feb. That analysis focused mainly on the heat-resistant ceramic tiles that protect the shuttle during its fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.īut in light of a 40F temperature spike in a left-side brake line and other equipment, as well as increased drag on the left side of the craft just minutes before the breakup, that assessment is now under scrutiny. After a weeklong analysis, while Columbia was still in orbit, they concluded that the shuttle had not suffered significant damage. NASAĮngineers first became aware of the mishap while watching a video of the liftoff on Jan. Astronaut Kalpana Chawla recording data from an experiment in the SPACEHAB research module, on day 11 of the last Columbia mission. Columbia’s final mission was one of the few devoted to science. A mishap 81 seconds after launch may have doomed the craft, which broke apart (below) 16 minutes before it was scheduled to land on Feb. The space shuttle Columbia taking off on Jan. The chunk was the largest piece of debris known to have struck a shuttle during launch. That’s when an estimated 2.7-pound chunk of insulating foam, perhaps combined with ice, came loose from the main external fuel tank and struck the underside of the shuttle’s left wing near the wheel well. 1 just minutes before it was scheduled to land, may have been doomed since its liftoff. The space shuttle Columbia, which tore apart killing all seven of its crew on Feb.
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