20 Years Ago The Final Voyage of The Space Shuttle Columbia Ended in Tragedy
The Lord has blessed us with a beautiful day here", mission commander Rick Husband said over the radio just before liftoff. "We appreciate all of the hard work everyone has put into this, and we are ready to go". Little did he know it would be his and Space Shuttle Columbia's last journey the vastness of space.
The last voyage of SS Columbia
On a windy, cool Thursday morning in Cape Canaveral, NASA's first space shuttle was about to make its last ever trip into space. SS Columbia lifted off at 10:39 a.m. Eastern time on Jan. 16, 2003, from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A with a crew of seven, consisting of mission commander Rick Husband, shuttle pilot William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon. 3,2,1 liftoff. The Launch was succesfull and the final voyage of the Space Shuttle Columbia was well on its way.
During re - entry, 16 days later, the shuttle would disintregate due to a chunk of insulating foam breaking off from the external fuel tank and hitting the left wing of the orbiter during the launch. The damage caused by the impact would prove to be fatal for the seven astronauts on - board the shuttle, as the extreme heat would be the vessel's demise as streaked across the skies over Texas.
Thank you for your service
Columbia's final mission was the orbiter's 28th overall, the 113th mission for the shuttle program. It was the first of five space shuttles, launching on its first mission April 12, 1981, with the late John Young on board as commander along with pilot Robert Crippen. Over 22 years, Columbia traveled more than 125 million miles orbiting the Earth 4,808 times while in space more than 300 days. It ferried 160 astronauts over its career including Shannon Lucid, Story Musgrave, Eileen Collins, Charles Boldin and Sen. Bill Nelson.