The Miami Herald February 1, 2003
Shuttle Columbia lost; debris falls on Texas
By MARTIN MERZER AND PHIL LONG
Shuttle Columbia, carrying the first Israeli astronaut and six Americans, apparently disintegrated this morning en route to a landing at Cape Canaveral. Debris was seen falling to earth over north Texas.
The fate of those aboard was not immediately known, but hopes for their survival were dim. Astronauts have no way to escape from a shuttle as it glides to a landing without power but at great speed and force. The shuttle was supposed to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:16 a.m. EST. It did not arrive, and NASA reported shortly after 9 a.m. that it had lost contact with the returning spaceship.
Columbia was at an altitude of 207,000 feet over north-central Texas at that time, traveling at 12,500 mph. Residents of the area reported hearing a loud bang.
''A contingency for the space shuttle has been declared,'' Mission Control repeated.
Television stations showed what appeared to be debris falling, and NASA warned Texas residents to beware of falling objects. NASA also announced that search and rescue teams were being mobilized in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas.
At the Kennedy Space Center, spouse and children of the astronauts were gathered from the landing strip and taken to a secluded location. At Mission Control near Houston, flight controllers stared solemnly at their computers.
No cause was immediately apparent.
When Columbia blasted into space on Jan. 16, a piece of insulating foam on its external fuel tank broke off and apparently struck the shuttle's left wing. NASA engineers concluded that any damage to the wing was minor and posed no safety hazard.
There was no evidence that terrorism played a role in the apparent disaster, but suspicions of terrorism or sabotage were likely to be aroused because of the presence onboard of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut.
Also aboard Columbia were commander Rick Husband, 45, co-pilot William McCool, 41, and mission specialists David Brown, 46, Kalpana Chawla, 41, Laurel Clark, 41, and Michael Anderson, 43.
All but Brown and Chawla are married. Ramon has four children, Husband has two and Clark has one. In addition to Ramon, McCool, Brown and Clark are space rookies.
Before the 16-day scientific flight, Ramon spoke evocatively about the symbolic nature of his assignment -- and its meaning to his people.
Though a secular Jew, he planned to observe the Sabbath, when possible, and eat kosher food aboard the shuttle. He called it an ''act of solidarity with Jewish tradition.''
''I was born in Israel,'' said Ramon, 48, ''and I'm kind of the proof for the whole Israeli people that whatever we fought for and we've been going through in the last century -- or maybe in the last 2,000 years -- is becoming true.''
Asked what he most looked forward to, Ramon said: ''Looking through the window and seeing Israel and Jerusalem from space . . .. I'm ready to go. I'm sure we'll all have a wonderful time together.''
Clark, another rookie, echoed his words.
''This is my first flight and I'm very excited,'' she said before liftoff. ''I can't wait to look down on our planet from space.''
President Bush monitored developments from the White House. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said it had no immediate comment.
It was the shuttle program's 113th mission. If the worse fears are confirmed, it will be the program's second major disaster. Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after blast off in January 1986.
The U.S. human space flight program began 42 years ago. Until today, there had never been an accident during a landing or an approach.
The mission had beens conducted under extraordinarily tight security:
During the countdown and blastoff, NASA and the military closed nearby roads, restricted the number of civilian sightseers at the space center and mustered fighter jets, helicopter patrols and SWAT teams to protect the shuttle and its crew.
As Ramon and the rest of the crew traveled from their quarters to the launch pad, a heavily armed helicopter hovered over the convoy. Federal agents accompanied Israeli officials from their beachside hotel to the viewing site.
Regardless of the cause, the apparent loss of the space shuttle and its crew jolted a nation still mourning the losses of Sept. 11, 2001, a nation still anxious, a nation still on high alert.
NASA's oldest shuttle, Columbia was inaugurated in flight on April 12, 1981, and had flown 27 times in space.
The shuttle fleet has endured numerous problems. In recent years, NASA had been concerned about the integrity of fuel injectors installed on some shuttle booster rockets and about wires that connect the shuttles to those rockets.
''[The shuttle's] perfectly capable of blowing up every time they launch it,'' John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va., space and defense policy watchdog group, told The Herald. ''They bet the agency every time they launch.''
Last year, cracked fuel lines appeared in all four shuttles and forced the three-month suspension of flight. Though small, they could have widened and propelled metal fragments into the engines, with catastrophic results.
Welders were assigned to make repairs, and NASA officials said the problem was solved.
In the recent past, then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin had been candid about the inherent hazards of spaceflight.
''When you go into space,'' he said, ''you risk your life.''
Copyright © 2003, The Miami Herald
