Columbia disaster, during re-entry. Footage from the flight deck of the Space Shuttle Columbia as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere at the end of mission STS-107 (16 January to 1 February 2003). This mission ended in tragedy when the shuttle broke up on re-entry due to damage to the leading edge of one of the wings, sustained during the launch, killing all seven on board. The members of the crew were US astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson and Laurel Clark, and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. This footage shows four astronauts on the flight deck: mission commander Rick Husband (front left seat), shuttle pilot William McCool (front right seat), mission specialist Kalpana Chawla (rear left seat) and mission specialist Laurel Clark (holding camera). The other three astronauts were seated in the mid-deck area of the shuttle. This footage is part of a 13-minute recording that survived the re-entry and break-up. The footage ends 11 minutes before the destruction of the shuttle. The astronauts are each wearing an Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES), but the subsequent investigation determined that the re-entry break-up had been a non-survivable event. The shuttle was travelling at around 24, 000 kilometres per hour at an altitude of over 60 kilometres. It broke up in seconds with the resulting debris strewn across Texas and Louisiana. The final minutes of the recording can be seen in clip K006/3430. |