The
National Geographic Channel will pick apart the steps and missteps that led up
to the NASA's Columbia tragedy, which killed seven astronauts and destroyed one
orbiter, tonight during a one-hour program highlighting the disaster.
Using reenactments,
computer graphics and a veritable mountain of research and investigation
results, "Seconds to Disaster: Columbia's Last Flight " recreates the final
minutes before the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry and offers
an in-depth look at the disaster's causes. The program is part of an ongoing
series that traces the cause of natural and manmade disasters.
In a way,
"Columbia's Last Flight" picks up where an earlier documentary - "Astronaut
Diaries: Remembering the Columbia Shuttle Crew" - left off. Whereas the
latter program paints an intimate portrait of the seven astronauts who made up
Columbia's ill-fated STS-107 crew, "Last Flight" focuses on the mechanics of
the mission, as well as the accident at launch that proved fatal at the
spaceflight's end.
During Columbia's
Jan. 16, 2003 launch, a chunk of insulating foam the size of a suitcase separated
from the shuttle's external tank and struck the orbiter's left wing. While the
incident, which engineers discovered after reviewing launch footage, did not
affect the liftoff or subsequent orbital spaceflight, it did gouge a hole in
the protective skin of Columbia's left wing leading edge.
That
puncture allowed hot gases to penetrate Columbia's wing as it reentered the
Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, ultimately destroying the spacecraft and
its crew. The accident grounded NASA's shuttle fleet for more than two years.
The next shuttle flight, STS-114 aboard the Discovery orbiter, is slated to
launch no earlier than July 13, 2005.
"Last
Flight" follows not only those final moments of Columbia and its crew, but also
the exhaustive search for wreckage and the months of investigation that
followed.
Everything
from the anxiety of mission controllers - most of whom appear in archival
footage - described by spaceflight experts and astronauts, to a reenactment of
STS-107 commander Rick Husband fighting for control of the orbiter as it breaks
apart offer a poignant view of how NASA faces disaster. But much of the human
impact from "Last Flight" comes from STS-107 family members, such as Jon Clark -
husband to STS-107 mission specialist Laurel Clark.
"There were
several people who made great, erroneous errors," Jon Clark says in "Last
Flight." "You've got to look at those errors and rectify them. That is my hope
for human spaceflight."
While "Last
Flight" seems to speed through the five months of investigations, tests and
more tests by NASA and other investigators to identify the root causes of the
Columbia accident, it does highlight the space agency's non-mechanical
failings, such as a bogged-down culture that suffered from safety "blind spots."
But had NASA
officials fully known at the time that the damage sustained by Columbia at
launch could prove fatal, they would not have risked atmospheric reentry,
experts explain.
"We would
have done something," says retired U.S. Navy Adm. Hal Gehman, who led the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board, in "Last Flight."
Seconds
to Disaster: Columbia's Last Flight airs at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on the National
Geographic Channel. Check local listings.
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