Amzar File

New NASA report details final minutes of Columbia


A new NASA report released Tuesday detailed chaotic final minutes of Columbia, which disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003, making known many of the details about the astronauts' deaths.

The 400-page report aims to figure out how to make NASA's next spaceship more survivable, targeting problems with the spacesuits, restraints and helmets of the Columbia crew.

Besides the known reasons to death like lack of oxygen or hitting something as the spacecraft tumbled and broke up, the new report paints a more detailed picture of the final moments of the crew than the broader investigation into the accident five years ago.

Astronaut Pam Melroy, deputy study chief, said analysis showed the astronauts were at their problem-solving best trying to recover Columbia, which was starting to crack up as it reentered Earth's atmosphere with a hole in its left wing, damage that had occurred at liftoff. "There was no way for them to know that it was going to be impossible."


The crew had lost control of the motion and direction of the spacecraft. The spacecraft was pitching end-over-end, the cabin lights were out, and parts of the shuttle behind the crew compartment, including its wings, were falling off.

"It was a very disorienting motion going on," NASA deputy associate administrator Wayne Hale said in a telephone conference call. "There were a number of alarms going off simultaneously. The crew was trying very hard to regain control. We're talking about a brief time in a crisis situation."

The report lists events that were each potentially lethal to the crew: Loss of cabin pressure just before or as the cabin broke up; crew members, unconscious or already dead, crashing into objects in the module; exposure to a near vacuum at about 30480 meters(100,000 feet); and crashing to the ground.

A NASA study team is recommending 30 changes based on Columbia, many of them aim at the spacesuits, helmets and seatbelts for both the shuttle and the next space capsule NASA is building. Since the accident, NASA has quietly made astronauts put more priority on getting their protective suits on, Melroy said.