Eleven years ago, February 1, 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster occurred causing seven causalities marking the first ever space shuttle lost in landing. The Space Shuttle Columbia was on a 16-day science research mission in Earth’s orbit, completing its 113th mission when the disaster struck.
After investigation, the cause of the disaster was concluded to be because of a large piece of foam that fell from the shuttle’s external tank, which fractured the wing of the spacecraft. Columbia was estimated to arrive at the Kennedy Space Center at 9 a.m. EST, however at 8:59 a.m. there were abnormal readings that Mission Control received and after several attempts there were no successful reaches to the space shuttle.
At 9:15 a.m. new stations began broadcasting that pieces of the space shuttle had been recovered and after two hours NASA recovered 84,000 pieces, accounting for only 40% of Columbia.
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