Many
people have heard of the Columbia Disaster, but not many people know how it
occurred. 10 years after the Columbia
broke up (it broke up February 01, 2003) when it was returning to earth,
Elizabeth Howell made an article explaining how it happened. What NASA determined was that there was a
giant piece of foam that broke off of the external tank of the spacecraft wing
when it took off. When this foam separated
from the spacecraft, it caused a fatal breach to occur when the crew was
landing. This hole in the wing caused
atmospheric gases to go into the spacecraft and lead to the destruction of
Columbia. A big controversy of this
tragedy is that NASA knew the problems with the foam years before the
accident. However, NASA didn't do much
to fix it (which I don’t understand why).
I’m curious to if the crew knew about the foam that flew off when they
took off, maybe if they did they could have done something to help prevent the tragedy. It upsets me that NASA knew the problem, but
didn't bother to do anything about it. Maybe foam is a cheaper thing to use
than another substance and that’s why they used it. It’s an interesting article and I’d recommend
reading it!
Article: http://www.space.com/19436-columbia-disaster.html
No comments:
Post a Comment