Just four days after the anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, we remember the Columbia disaster February 1, 2003. When the Columbia launched on January 16, after 18 delays, a piece of foam insulation broke off and struck the left wing. Upon re-entry, the damage to the wing allowed hot gases to enter the wing and destroy it, causing the shuttle to disintegrate over Texas and Louisiana.
NASA engineers realized the damage was worse than had been seen before in similar incidents, but decided there was nothing the astronauts could do to prevent catastrophe, so the astronauts were never informed of their situation.
A video of the last few minutes of the Columbia mission.
Later, the investigation determined that there were two possible scenarios to rescue the crew: an emergency spacewalk to repair the damage to the wing; or, transfer the crew to the Atlantis, which was scheduled for launch on March 1. The Columbia had a large amount of consumables on board which would've lasted the crew until February 15. The Atlantis's launch could have been moved up to February 10, leaving a 5 day window to rescue the Columbia's crew.
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