STS-107

Launch, orbit & landing data: Designation  27647 / 03003A Launch date - time  16 Jan 2003 - 15:39 UT Launch site  KSC, LC39A Launch vehicle  Space Shuttle Orbiter  Columbia #28 (OV-102) Primary payload  Spacehab RDM Mass (kg)   Flight Crew  Husband, McCool, Brown, Chawla Anderson, Clark, Ramon Earth orbit on :    - Perigee / Apogee  278 km    - Inclination  °    - Period   min Disintegrated date - time  01 Feb 2003 - 14:00 UT Loss of contact - time  01 Feb 2003 - 13:59:22 UT Flight Duration (d:hr:min)  15d 22h 20m 22s* Nbr orbits  255

Crew

Seated in front are astronauts Rick D. Husband (left) Kalpana Chawla and William C. McCool. Standing are (from the left) David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark, Michael P. Anderson and Ilan Ramon.

Astronaut ready to go for launch

* From launch time until loss of contact.

Summary:

Description cargo bay:

• Payload bay manifest for STS-107:

                              Mass (kg)
  Bay  1    Tunnel Adapter     500?
  Bay  2-3  Tunnel             800?
  Bay  4-7  Spacehab RDM      8000?
  Bay  10   FREESTAR MPESS    2000?
  Keel 11   OARE                53
  Bay 12-13 EDO pallet        3200?
                            ------
  Total                      14553?
  
  

• The Spacehab Research Double Module is making its first flight. It carries a selection of microgravity experiments including the Combustion Module 2 racks, the Vapor Compression Distillation rack which is a prototype for a Station water recycling system, a centrifuge, a refrigerator/freezer, and three Animal Enclosure Modules carrying a total of 13 rats. Educational experiments include an ant colony, spiders, bees and Medaka fish. The RDM is pressurized and connected to the cabin by the Tunnel and the Tunnel Adapter (which has a hatch that could be used for emergency spacewalks).
• The FREESTAR (Fast Reaction Experiments Enabling Science Technology Applications and Research) is a Hitchhiker science payload managed by NASA-Goddard. FREESTAR uses an MPESS cross-bay bridge and is a followon to the USMP series. It carries the Critical Viscosity of Xenon experiment, as well as an ozone spectrometer, a detector to study solar radiation output, and an Israeli experiment with UV and IR cameras to study dust and aerosols in the atmosphere in the Mediterraean and the Sahara. An Israeli astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon, will be flying on the mission.
• The OARE is an acceleration measuring package installed in the bottom of the payload bay. The EDO (Extended Duration Orbiter) pallet contains hydrogen and oxygen tanks used to generate electricity for the long duration mission.

Mission details:

• After the STS-111 flight (Jun 2002), the Shuttle fleet has been grounded. (Technically, only the next launch, of STS-107/Columbia, has been delayed, and processing continues on the rest of the Orbiters, but in fact there will be no launches until NASA has solved this problem). Cracks were found in pipes containing propellant flow lines in the aft fuselage of the Orbiters. These `flowliners' supply cold liquid hydrogen from the external tank; they might be difficult to replace and it is feared that Shuttle missions could be delayed many months. On the other hand, engineers may determine that the tiny cracks aren't a problem, or can be patched up easily, in which case the delay in the STS-107 schedule would be only about one month and other missions might fly on time.
• The next flight is currently STS-107, although that could change. This mission is a rare non-Station related flight (the only other one in the past two years was the STS-109 Hubble mission); it was added to the schedule to preserve science opportunities following the end of the Spacelab program.
• July 2002: The Shuttle launch schedule remains under review, and no final decision has been made on repairs to the Orbiter hydrogen flow liners. It does seem likely that the next flight will be STS-112/Atlantis, with STS-107/Columbia delayed till the end of the year.
• After been delayed from last year, Columbia was launched on mission STS-107 on Jan 16, 2003 at 1539 UTC. At 1547 UTC it reached a 78 x 272 km orbit and the external tank separated. At 1620 UTC the OMS-2 burn raised the orbit to 270 x 283 km. Columbia carried out its microgravity research mission for two weeks.
• Columbia was in a 272 x 289 km x 39.0 deg orbit when it fired the OMS engines for deorbit at 1315 UTC in Feb 1, 2003 (for 2min 38s). This dropped the orbit to around 1 x 275 km x 39.0 deg. At 1344 UTC Columbia reached NASA's nominal entry interface at an altitude of 122 km and began the transition from a spaceship to an aircraft. The descent continued with the first hypersonic slalom turn, as the Orbiter crossed the California coast. Up to this point, as Columbia approached maximum reentry heating, everything appeared well.
• Multiple on-board sensors in the area of the left wing stopped working or showed temperature rises beginning at 1352 UTC, as ground-based observers began to see material apparently breaking off from the fiery trail of the vehicle. Near to 1400 UTC left wing drag increased, causing rapid changes in the required trim. At this point the vehicle appears to have broken into multiple large pieces, either due to structural and thermal failure or to loss of attitude. Loss of voice communications and interruption of telemetry was at 60 km altitude and Mach 18.3 at 1359:32 UTC; a final 2 second telemetry fragment shows that most of Columbia was intact up to 1400:04 UTC. Ground video shows multiple contrails at 1400:30 UTC.
• Orbiter OV-102 Columbia was lost 15 minutes before its scheduled landing on Feb 1 at the end of the STS-107 microgravity mission. The seven astronauts were killed when the left wing failed and the spaceship broke apart. Debris has been found over a wide area centered in east Texas near the Palestine, Texas region (site of NASA's balloon launch facility), and stretching from Fort Worth eastward into Louisiana.
• One possible scenario is that a piece of external tank foam (1 kg, 0.6m piece) which broke off 80 seconds after launch hit the underside of the leading edge and loosened a carrier panel near RCC leading edge segment number 6, possibly previously weakened by corrosion or some other problem. During an attitude manuever on Jan 17 the panel separated (and was tracked on radar). As Columbia reached entry interface on Feb 1, hot gas entered as early as 1351:09 UTC, and began melting the aluminium wing structure.
• In a dramatic test in Texas on July 7, 2003 foam shot at RCC panel 8 in a Shuttle wing mockup smashed a huge (half-meter) hole in the panel, lending strong credibility to the hypothesis that external tank foam caused a breach in Columbia's wing during launch. The actual breach was more likely only of order 0.2m. The most likely scenario for the breakup can now be summarized (below); the remarkable thing is the continued stable flight of Columbia for several minutes after serious breaches in the left wing.

   Time (UTC)                Event
  
   2003 Jan 16 1539:00       Launch
               1540:21       ET bipod foam piece separates;
                             Drag slows it by 200 m/s;
                             Hits lower part of RCC panel 8
               1541:06       SRB separation
               1547:33       Main engine cutoff
               1547:44       ET separation
               1620:24       OMS-2 burn
               1736:01       Payload bay doors open
   2003 Jan 17 1517          Yaw attitude change
               1517?         Fragment of panel 8 drifts out 
                             of damaged leading edge area
                             Tracked on radar as 2003-03B
   2003 Jan 19 2100?         Fragment 2003-03B reenters
   2003 Feb  1               Payload bay doors close (time uncertain)
               1315:30       Deorbit burn, completed 1318:08
               1344:09       Entry interface (reaches fiducial 120.4km altitude)
               1348:39-59    First data showing stress and heating on left wing
               1350:00       Fragments of RCC panel 8/9 breaking off?
               1351:14       Aluminium wing spar melts through in RCC 8/9 region
               1354:33       Parts of left wing skin and tiles breaking off
               1359:38       Loss of signal
               1359:46       Left wing breaking up
               1400:14       End of recorder data
               1400:18       Orbiter breaks up
  

• The Shuttle program is now grounded indefinitely. This also impacts the International Space Station program and the already-delayed Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (which would have been flown by Columbia). There are three remaining orbiters (Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour) and it would not be practical to build a replacement.

External links:

• AmericaSpace: Remembering Columbia′s Final Flight Home.

Astrophilately covers:

Launch cancel KSC. Credit: J. Vd Dr.

Return cancel KSC. Credit: J. Vd Dr.

KSC cancel, disintegrated during landing. Credit: #312