Columbia: February First, Two Thousand Three

Sixteen days before Columbia disintegrated, during the launch that put the shuttle in orbit, a piece of insulating foam broke off the external fuel tank and struck the left wing. The impact was recorded on camera. Mission managers were informed. An engineering team was asked to assess the risk. They concluded, on analysis that the subsequent accident investigation board would describe as deeply flawed, that the damage posed no safety concern.

Columbia had been in space for sixteen days on a science mission when it began reentry over the western United States on the morning of February first, two thousand three. At approximately eight forty-nine in the morning, superheated atmospheric gas entered through the breach in the left wing's thermal protection tiles, the gap the foam had created, and the vehicle came apart over Texas and Louisiana. All seven crew members were killed: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, and Laurel Clark.

Ilan Ramon was Israel's first astronaut. Kalpana Chawla had been the first woman of Indian descent in space on her first flight, and this was her second. She was forty-one years old.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which issued its report in August of two thousand three, found that NASA's organizational culture was as much the cause of the disaster as the foam strike itself. Managers had possessed adequate information during the mission to request emergency satellite imagery of the wing damage. They did not request it. The decision not to look closely enough was institutional, not accidental.

The shuttle program flew about twenty two more missions after Columbia, then ended in two thousand eleven with Atlantis. The two disasters, Challenger and Columbia, claimed fourteen lives across seventeen years. The gap between them is long enough that it is easy to forget they are connected: two different technical failures, one consistent pattern of known warnings going unheeded.