As Pamela A. The tenth mission of the space shuttle Challenger ended in tragedy. It then crashed into the Atlantic Ocean from an altitude of approximately 50, feet. An investigation following the incident found that NASA had known that freezing temperatures could damage the spacecraft's rubber O-rings, built to separate the rocket boosters and stop fuel leaks, and prevent them from sealing.
His request fell on deaf ears. After one particularly frustrating meeting with NASA officials, Ebeling is reported to have gone home and told his wife that the Challenger shuttle would blow up. NASA decided to go ahead with the launch despite these warnings, leading to widespread outrage and the temporary suspension of the space shuttle program.
This disaster accounts for the only 3 people to have died while actually in space. After the Apollo mission's successful moon landing, the Soviet Union was eager to make its mark with its space program and outdo its U. Two months later, three cosmonauts earned hero status in Russia by taking off on the Soyuz 11 rocket, docking at Salyut-1, and spending three weeks aboard carrying out scientific observations.
Everything seemed to be going to plan until the return trip on June The spacecraft made a normal re-entry and a perfect landing. However, when ground operatives opened the hatch all three cosmonauts were unresponsive. Soyuz 11 had landed automatically. During its descent, a faulty air vent had opened leading to cabin depressurization. None of the cosmonauts were wearing space suits, meaning they quickly ran out of oxygen and likely suffocated to death approximately 30 minutes before landing.
As a legacy of the Soyuz 11 disaster, it became a requirement for cosmonauts and astronauts to wear spacesuits during any stages of a mission where depressurization could occur.
Vladimir Komarov is one of the truly tragic figures of the space race that heated up between the U. The Challenger disaster remains perhaps the most notorious in the history of spaceflight, owing to the number of people, many of them schoolchildren, who saw it live on TV.
A subsequent report sharply criticised NASA for allowing the incident to happen and failing to intervene during the mission. The remaining four fatalities during spaceflight were all cosmonauts from the Soviet Union. The first was Vladimir Komarov on 24 April , when the parachute on the landing capsule of his Soyuz 1 mission failed to open. This was the first crewed flight of the Soyuz spacecraft that is still used to send people to the International Space Station.
Several people within NASA pushed to get pictures of the breached wing in orbit. The Department of Defense was reportedly prepared to use its orbital spy cameras to get a closer look. The landing proceeded without further inspection. On Feb. Just before 9 a. EST, however, abnormal readings showed up at Mission Control.
Temperature readings from sensors located on the left wing were lost. Then, tire pressure readings from the left side of the shuttle also vanished.
The Capcom, or spacecraft communicator, called up to Columbia to discuss the tire pressure readings. At a. At that point, Columbia was near Dallas, traveling 18 times the speed of sound and still , feet 61, meters above the ground. Mission Control made several attempts to get in touch with the astronauts, with no success. Twelve minutes later, when Columbia should have been making its final approach to the runway, a mission controller received a phone call.
The caller said a television network was showing a video of the shuttle breaking up in the sky. Shortly afterward, NASA declared a space shuttle "contingency" and sent search and rescue teams to the suspected debris sites in Texas and later, Louisiana. Later that day, NASA declared the astronauts lost. The search for debris took weeks, as it was shed over a zone of some 2, square miles 5, square kilometers in east Texas alone.
NASA eventually recovered 84, pieces, representing nearly 40 percent of Columbia by weight. Among the recovered material were crew remains, which were identified with DNA. Much later, in , NASA released a crew survival report detailing the Columbia crew's last few minutes. The astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of Columbia, but lost consciousness in seconds after the cabin lost pressure. The crew died as the shuttle disintegrated. In the weeks after the disaster, a dozen officials began sifting through the Columbia disaster, led by Harold W.
Gehman Jr.
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