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NASA commemorated on Friday the accident on the Columbia space shuttle, in which seven astronauts died a decade ago, a tragedy that marked the beginning of the end for space travel and led to a whole refurbishing of the special program in the United States. The space agency in the United States will remember the seven astronauts which pssed away in the explosion on February 1, 2002, as well as the three Apolo 1 austronauts that died in January 1967 and the seven members of the Challenger in 1986. The Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, 74 seconds after takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo: AP
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Columbia, the first shuttle to be launched into space on paril 1981, disintegrated upon its return. The thermal shield on its wings was damaged by the impact of an isolated foam that may have escaped from the external tank shortly after take off two weeks earlier.
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After the accident, the government of George W. Bush decided to investigate the program, although it allowed the three remaining missions to fly until 2011 to allow the ISS (International Space State) to be completed and to meet the commitment the United States had made to its partners, John Logsdon, former directors of the Institute of Space Politics at George Washington University, told AFP.
Photo: AP
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The Shuttle program almost ended earlier. In July 2005, during the first flight after the Columbia accident, the same problem resulted to the shuttle, but the foam piece was unable to pierce the thermal shield.
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In the photo, the seven astronauts who passed away ten years ago in the Texas sky. The shuttle fleet was paralyzed on land for almost a year and the Bush government seriously considered ending the program. The president ginally gave into the pressure from other countries to complete the ISS.
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NASA knew soon after the first shuttle flights in the 1980's that they would not give simple or cheap access to outer space.
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"I think that--in the words of the investigate commission--not substituting the shuttle was a failure by the political leaders," leaving the United States confined to the lower orbit for 30 years, he said. But, according to this expert "the fundamental error was committed in 1971 and 1972, when they decided to develop a space ship that would combine the transport of cargo and personnel. It would have been better to seperate them and last costly, he believes. Photo: AP -
The space capsule, Orion, which is being developed for manned missions to the ISS, to the moon, asteroids and Mars, has a security system that allows personnel to be sepereated from the launching vehicle, something the shuttles do not have. IN this photo is the wreckage of the Columbia.
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Since the last shuttle flight in July 2011, the United States has been using Russian space ships, Soyuz, to carry astronauts to the space station, paying 60 million dollars per seat. In 2010, Barack Obama put in motion a program to stimulate the private sector to develop systems to carry cargo and personnell to the ISS.
Photo: AP
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NASA commemorated on Friday the accident on the Columbia space shuttle, in which seven astronauts died a decade ago, a tragedy that marked the beginning of the end for space travel and led to a whole refurbishing of the special program in the United States. The space agency in the United States will remember the seven astronauts which pssed away in the explosion on February 1, 2002, as well as the three Apolo 1 austronauts that died in January 1967 and the seven members of the Challenger in 1986. The Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, 74 seconds after takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo: AP
