Excerpt:
The Columbia STS-107 mission lifted off on January 16, 2003, for a 17-day science mission featuring numerous microgravity experiments. Upon reentering the atmosphere on February 1, 2003, the Columbia orbiter suffered a catastrophic failure due to a breach that occurred during launch when falling foam from the External Tank struck the Reinforced Carbon Carbon panels on the underside of the left wing. The orbiter and its seven crewmembers (Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David Brown, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, and Kalpana Chawla) were lost approximately 15 minutes before Columbia was scheduled to touch down at Kennedy Space Center. This site presents information about the STS-107 flight, as well as information related to the accident and subsequent investigation by the formal Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
Annotation:
This website from the NASA History Office has a wealth of information about the shuttle Columbia mission itself, the loss of the shuttle in February 2003, and the ensuing investigation. There are formal biographies of crew members, extremely detailed timelines, and a twenty-page document with accompanying acronym list entitled "STS-107 Accident Investigation Ground Track, Events Summary, and Sighting Data." A number of images and links to documents from NASA, Congress, and the White House are available, as is full information about the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, from its charter and members, to the six-volume report. Professionally-compiled bibliogaphies on Space Shuttles, the Columbia accident, and organizational culture are also included. Finally, reflections from the public gathered on the web are collected and displayed, adding individual responses to the loss of the shuttle to this very informative site.
