This
story was updated at 12:44 p.m. EST.
NASA has
launched seven shuttle missions since the loss of seven astronauts aboard Columbia five years ago today, but the disaster still resonates as the space program
prepares for its most ambitious year yet since it resumed orbiter flight.
Beginning
with the Atlantis orbiter's planned Feb. 7 launch to the International Space
Station (ISS), NASA hopes to launch up to six shuttle flights this year — five
of them dedicated to orbital construction. The lessons from Columbia, however,
are always close by, mission managers said.
"I think
every day about Columbia and how that came about, and how we can prevent
similar events," NASA's shuttle chief Wayne Hale said this week, attributing
the accident to what Apollo astronaut Frank Borman called a "failure of
imagination."
Legacy
of Columbia
Columbia broke apart while
reentering the Earth's atmosphere one early Saturday morning on Feb. 1, 2003,
bringing to a tragic end what had until then been a successful 16-day science
mission. The shuttle's destruction claimed the lives of mission commander Rick
Husband, pilot Willie McCool and mission specialists Michael Anderson, Kalpana
Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon — Israel's first astronaut.
Months
later, investigators would trace the physical cause of the accident to a
suitcase-sized chunk of foam that popped free from Columbia's external fuel
tank during its Jan. 16, 2003 launch. The foam punched a hole in the orbiter's
heat shield along its left wing leading edge, leaving it vulnerable to the
superheated atmospheric gases during landing.
But
investigators also faulted NASA's internal culture for contributing the
accident, a point the space agency has worked hard ever since to prevent from
resurfacing.
"I think we
had a culture that was very adversarial in a lot of ways, where bad news was
not particularly well received," Hale told SPACE.com, adding that the
agency has since strived to foster more open communications. "I think that has
allowed a lot of the workforce to feel much more comfortable in bringing things
forward that they would have been more hesitant to in the old days."
NASA held
an official Day of Remembrance on Thursday to recall
Columbia's crew, as well as astronauts killed in the Challenger accident in
1986, the 1967 Apollo 1 fire and others who died in the pursuit of
space exploration. Astronauts, agency officials, dignitaries and Columbia crew family members gathered today at a public memorial service at the Kennedy
Space Center Visitor's Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
"I'm amazed
that it's been five years," said Evelyn Husband-Thomas, the widow of Columbia's commander, during the service. "This morning I could not stop thinking about
Rick and Willie, and Kalpana and Mike and Laurel and Ilan. All of our families
went through so much that day. We so miss them and we will never forget them."
NASA chief
Michael Griffin stressed that the agency must always remember that human lives,
and the nation's space program, ride on its daily decisions.
"The more we remember those real reasons, the longer it will
be before we have another cause for mourning," Griffin said in a statement.
Returning
to flight
NASA
returned its shuttle fleet to flight in July 2005 after spending more than two
years and $1.4 billion to develop new heat shield inspection and safety tools.
That year, the agency flew one shuttle flight and followed with three more
2006, and another three in 2007.
Former
astronaut Eileen Collins, who commanded NASA's first post-Columbia mission STS-114,
said the accident taught her that spaceflight is more dangerous and complicated
than she realized. But it did not damper her support for the endeavor, she
said.
"I believe
that one of the most important things that we're doing as a country, if not the
most important thing, is leaving our planet and exploring space," Collins said.
Astronauts
now use a sensor-tipped extension of their shuttle's robotic arm to scan for
heat shield damage in orbit. Before a shuttle docks at the ISS, station
astronauts make a complete photographic survey of its heat shield, then return
the images to Earth for analysis. Meanwhile, engineers continue
to develop new tools, some of which will be tested during shuttle flights
this year, while tweaking orbiter fuel tanks to reduce the risk of foam debris
like that which struck down Columbia.
"There
seems to be a lean towards excessive caution," said John Logsdon, director of
the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in an interview.
Logsdon
said that, unlike its post-Challenger years, NASA has not slid back into a
complacency or comfort zone during the last five years of shuttle flight.
The fact
that the agency delayed Atlantis' launch from early December to next week to
identify and fix a recurring
fuel gauge sensor glitch is an example of its reinvigorated approach to
safety, Logsdon said.
"They were
tempted to say these sensors weren't needed, but they didn't," Logsdon said of the
sensors, which serve as a backup system to shut down an orbiter's main engines
before their fuel tank runs dry.
Logsdon
said much of the shuttle's success since Columbia lies with top NASA leaders
like Griffin and Hale, who have demonstrated a scrupulous and strong commitment
to safety.
Their
successors, he hopes, will continue that track record as NASA retires its three
remaining space shuttles to make way for their capsule-based successor — the
Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and its Ares rockets.
"Some day,
historians will look back at our hardware and our technology an consider it
primitive and risky, just as well look back at the early sailing ships and
shake our head," said William Gerstenmaier, head of NASA space operations,
during today's memorial, adding that those early explorers accomplished amazing
feats. "We do not fully know what our efforts in space will enable for future
generation. But if we carefully and creatively apply our technology and accept
some risk, the benefits to future generations are unlimited."
NASA plans
to retire the shuttle fleet by September 2010 after flying up to 13 more
shuttle flights to complete station construction and overhaul the Hubble Space
Telescope.
"I think
you can carry attitudes over," Logsdon said of the shift to a new spacecraft.
"And that new system is designed to be a much safer system."
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