Challenger space shuttle human remains9/23/2023 ![]() ![]() NASA says it has already incorporated many lessons from the Columbia accident in the design of its next-generation space travel system, known as Constellation. It criticized managers as complacent and too tightly focused on scheduling and budgetary pressures. In a scathing report issued in August 2003, an investigative board later found that a “broken safety culture” at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was largely responsible for the deaths. The managers, however, held firm to the then-common belief that foam strikes were relatively harmless and constituted a maintenance problem, not a fatal risk. The impact of the foam was obvious in videos taken at launching, and during the Columbia’s 16-day mission, NASA engineers pleaded with mission managers to examine the wing to see if the blow had caused serious damage. The foam punched a hole that would later allow superheated gases to cut through the wing’s interior like a blowtorch. While many details of the Columbia’s last flight have long been known, this was the most extensive study ever performed on how the astronauts died and what could be done to improve the chances of survival in a future accident.Īlthough the shuttle broke up during re-entry, its fate had been all but sealed during ascent, when a 1.67-pound piece of insulating foam broke away from an external fuel tank and struck the leading edge of the craft’s left wing. They added, “There is no known complete protection from the breakup event except to prevent its occurrence.” “The breakup of the crew module and the crew’s subsequent exposure to hypersonic entry conditions was not survivable by any currently existing capability,” they wrote. 1, 2003, as the Columbia disintegrated after re-entering the atmosphere on the way to its landing strip in Florida. Investigators state bluntly in the 400-page report that better equipment in the crew cabin would not have saved the astronauts on the morning of Feb. While the astronauts’ upper bodies flailed, the helmets that were supposed to protect them ended up battering their skulls, the report said, and “lethal trauma occurred to the unconscious or deceased crew due to the lack of upper-body support and restraint.” Seven astronauts slipped into unconsciousness within seconds and their bodies were whipped around in seats whose restraints failed as the space shuttle Columbia spun out of control and disintegrated in 2003, according to a new report from NASA. ![]()
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