STS-107

STS-107 was the 113th flight of the Space Shuttle program, and the 28th and final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. The mission ended on February 1, 2003, with the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, in which all seven crew members were killed upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere; the shuttle was destroyed along with most of its scientific payloads.

The flight launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2003. It spent 15 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes, 32 seconds in orbit. The crew conducted a multitude of international scientific experiments. The disaster occurred during reentry while the orbiter was over Texas.

Immediately after the disaster, NASA convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to determine the cause of the disintegration. The source of the failure was determined to have been caused by a piece of foam that broke off during launch and damaged the thermal protection system (reinforced carbon-carbon panels and thermal protection tiles) on the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. During re-entry the damaged wing slowly overheated and came apart, eventually leading to loss of control and disintegration of the vehicle. The cockpit window frame is now exhibited in a memorial inside the Space Shuttle Atlantis Pavilion at the Kennedy Space Center.

The damage to the thermal protection system on the wing was similar to that of Atlantis which had also sustained damage in 1988 during STS-27, the second mission after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. However, the damage on STS-27 occurred at a spot that had more robust metal (a thin steel plate near the landing gear), and that mission survived the re-entry.

Crew

Crew seat assignments Seat Launch Landing Seats 1–4 are on the flight deck.Seats 5–7 are on the mid-deck. 1 Husband 2 McCool 3BrownClark 4 Chawla 5 Anderson 6ClarkBrown 7 Ramon

Mission highlights

STS-107 carried the SPACEHAB Research Double Module (RDM) on its inaugural flight, the Freestar experiment (also known as FREESTAR) (mounted on a Hitchhiker Program rack), and the Extended Duration Orbiter pallet. SPACEHAB was first flown on STS-57.

The primary mission focus was multidisciplinary microgravity research.

On the day of the experiment, a video taken to study atmospheric dust may have detected a new atmospheric phenomenon, dubbed a "TIGER" (Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red).

On board Columbia was a copy of a drawing by Petr Ginz, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Vedem, who depicted what he imagined the Earth looked like from the Moon when he was a 14-year-old prisoner in the Terezín concentration camp. The copy was in the possession of Ilan Ramon and was lost in the disintegration. Ramon also traveled with a dollar bill received from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

An Australian experiment, created by students from Glen Waverley Secondary College, was designed to test the reaction of zero gravity on the web formation of the Australian garden orb weaver spider.

Major experiments

Examples of some of the experiments and investigations on the mission.

In SPACEHAB RDM: 9 commercial payloads with 21 investigations; 4 payloads for the European Space Agency with 14 investigations; 1 payload for ISS Risk Mitigation; 18 payloads NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) with 23 investigations.

In the payload bay attached to RDM: Combined Two-Phase Loop Experiment (COM2PLEX); Miniature Satellite Threat Reporting System (MSTRS); Star Navigation (STARNAV).

FREESTAR Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2); Space Experiment Module (SEM-14); Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) Low Power Transceiver (LPT) and Communications and Navigation Demonstration On Shuttle (CANDOS); Solar Constant Experiment-3 (SOLCON-3); Shuttle Ozone Limb Sounding Experiment (SOLSE-2);

Additional payloads Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust Experiment (SIMPLEX); Ram Burn Observation (RAMBO).

Results and data gained Three experiments performed during the mission examined combustion, soot production, and fire quenching processes in microgravity, which provided new insights into combustion and fire suppression not able to be observed in Earth conditions. Other activities included a granular compression experiment which aided understanding of construction techniques, two separate experiments exploring the biological applications of cell cultures that could be used to combat prostate cancer or increase crop yield, as well as several other experiments that evaluated the commercial usefulness of plant products grown in space.

Data recovery Because much of the data was transmitted during the mission, there was still large return on the mission objectives even though Columbia was lost on re-entry. NASA estimated that 30% of the total science data was saved and collected through telemetry back to ground stations. Around 5-10% more data was saved and collected through recovering samples and hard drives intact on the ground after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, increasing the total data of saved experiments despite the disaster from 30% to 35-40%.

About five or six Columbia payloads encompassing many experiments were successfully recovered in the debris field. Scientists and engineers were able to recover 99% of the data for one of the six FREESTAR experiments, Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2), that flew unpressurized in the payload bay during the mission after recovering the viscometer and hard drive damaged but fully intact in the debris field in Texas. NASA recovered a commercial payload, Commercial Instrumentation Technology Associates (ITA) Biomedical Experiments-2 (CIBX-2), and ITA was able to increase the total data saved from STS-107 from 0% to 50% for this payload. This experiment studied treatments for cancer, and the micro-encapsulation experiment part of the payload was completely recovered, increasing from 0% data to 90% data after recovering the samples fully intact for this experiment. In this same payload were numerous crystal-forming experiments by hundreds of elementary and middle school students from all across the United States. Miraculously most of their experiments were found intact in CIBX-2, increasing from 0% data to 100% fully recovered data. The BRIC-14 (moss growth experiment) and BRIC-60 (Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm experiment) samples were found intact in the debris field within a radius in east Texas. 80-87% of these live organisms survived the catastrophe. The moss and roundworms experiments' original primary mission was not nominal due to the lack of having the samples immediately after landing in their original state (they were discovered many months after the crash), but these samples helped the scientific community greatly in the field of astrobiology and helped form new theories about microorganisms surviving a long trip in outer space while traveling on meteorites or asteroids.

Re-entry

Columbia began re-entry as planned, but the heat shield was compromised due to damage sustained during the ascent during which foam insulation from the external tank struck its left wing. The heat of re-entry was free to spread into the damaged portion of the orbiter, ultimately causing its disintegration and the death of all seven astronauts.

Aftermath Upon realizing the tragedy, the Mission Control Center was locked and all of the data was saved for the coming investigation. Within 90 minutes a meeting was convened and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) was formed.

The accident triggered a seven-month investigation and a search for debris, and over 85,000 pieces were collected throughout the initial investigation. This amounted to roughly 38 percent of the orbiter vehicle.

The CAIB investigation confirmed the immediate cause of the accident as a foam strike to the leading edge of the shuttle's left wing during launch and criticized NASA for bad organizational and safety culture.

Insignia

The mission insignia itself is the only patch of the shuttle program that is entirely shaped in the orbiter's outline. The central element of the patch is the microgravity symbol, μg, flowing into the rays of the astronaut symbol.

The mission inclination is portrayed by the 39-degree angle of the astronaut symbol to the Earth's horizon. The sunrise is representative of the numerous experiments that are the dawn of a new era for continued microgravity research on the International Space Station and beyond. The breadth of science and the exploration of space is illustrated by the Earth and stars. The constellation Columba (the dove) was chosen to symbolize peace on Earth and the Space Shuttle Columbia. The seven stars also represent the mission crew members and honor the original astronauts who paved the way to make research in space possible. Six stars have five points, the seventh has six points like a Star of David, symbolizing the Israeli Space Agency's contributions to the mission.

An Israeli flag is adjacent to the name of Payload Specialist Ramon, who was the first Israeli in space. The crew insignia or 'patch' design was initiated by crew members Dr. Laurel Clark and Dr. Kalpana Chawla. First-time crew member Clark provided most of the design concepts as Chawla led the design of her maiden voyage STS-87 insignia. Clark also pointed out that the dove in the Columba constellation was mythologically connected to the explorers the Argonauts who released the dove.

Wake-up calls Throughout the shuttle program, sleeping astronauts were often awakened each morning by songs and short pieces of music chosen by their families, friends, and Mission Control, a tradition dating back to the Gemini and Apollo programs. While the crew of STS-107 worked shifts in "red" and "blue" teams to work around the clock, on this mission each shift was still awoken with a "wake-up call"; the only other two-shift shuttle mission to do so was STS-99.

Day Team Song Artist/Performer Played for Link 2 Blue "E'mma" Touré Kunda David Brown WAV Red "America, the Beautiful" Texas Elementary Honors Choir Rick Husband WAV 3 Blue "Coming Back to Life" Pink Floyd William McCool WAVRed "Space Truckin'" Deep Purple Kalpana Chawla WAV 4 Blue "Cultural Exchange" Not listed David Brown WAVRed ""() The High Windows Ilan Ramon WAV 5 Blue "Fake Plastic Trees" Radiohead William McCool WAVRed "Amazing Grace" Black Watch and 51st Highland Brigade Band Laurel Clark WAV 6 Blue "Texan 60" Not listed David Brown WAVRed "God of Wonders" Steve Green Rick Husband WAV 7 Blue "The Wedding Song" Paul Stookey William McCool WAVRed "Prabhati" Ravi Shankar Kalpana Chawla WAV 8 Blue "Hakuna Matata" The Baha Men Michael Anderson WAVRed "" Arik Einstein Ilan Ramon WAV 9 Blue "Burning Down The House" Talking Heads To honor combustion experimentsWAVRed "Kung Fu Fighting" Carl Douglas Whole crew WAV 10 Blue "Hotel California" The Eagles / McCool Family William McCool WAVRed "The Prayer" Celine Dion Rick Husband WAV 11 Blue "I Say a Little Prayer" Dionne Warwick Michael Anderson WAVRed "Drops of Jupiter" Train Kalpana Chawla WAV 12 Blue "When Day Is Done" Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli David Brown WAVRed "Love of My Life" Queen Ilan Ramon WAV 13 Blue "Slow Boat to Rio" Earl Klugh Michael Anderson WAVRed "Running to the Light" Runrig Laurel Clark WAV 14 Blue "I Get Around" The Beach Boys David Brown WAVRed "Up On the Roof" James Taylor Rick Husband WAV 15 Blue "Imagine" John Lennon William McCool WAVRed "" Abita Parveen Kalpana Chawla WAV 16 Blue "Silver Inches" Enya David Brown WAVRed "" Yehoram Gaon Ilan Ramon WAV 17 Blue "If You've Been Delivered" Kirk Franklin Michael Anderson WAVRed "Scotland the Brave" The Black Watch and 51st Highland Brigade Band Laurel Clark WAV

Gallery

STS-107

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