On the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia was set to return to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center following a 16-day orbital mission packed with scientific experiments.
But just 15 minutes after breaching Earth’s atmosphere — while still at an altitude of some 39 miles (63 kilometers) and traveling at about 18 times the speed of sound — Columbia catastrophically broke apart over northeast Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board.
Those astronauts were Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Kalpana Chawla, and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon of Israel.
Columbia’s final mission
What turned out to be Columbia’s last mission, STS-107, was the first of six space shuttle missions NASA had planned for 2003. It was also the only mission that year that wasn’t focused on continuing the construction of the ever-growing International Space Station (ISS).
Instead, the Columbia crew was tasked with carrying out the first shuttle mission dedicated to microgravity research in nearly five years. Conducting some 80 experiments over the course of 16 days in orbit, the crew’s investigations spanned the physical, biological, and space sciences.
