14 DAY TRIAL // According to an announcement made by NASA officials on Tuesday, August 2, a piece of debris from the space shuttle Columbia was discovered recently in Texas. The finding comes 8 years after the 2003 tragedy that saw the orbiter disintegrating during atmospheric reentry, killing all 7 crew members.
The disaster was caused by damage the heatshield sustained during launch. Pieces of foam insulation from the external fuel tank fell on the ceramic tiles that provide shuttles wit protection during reentry.
When it came time for Columbia to land, the huge temperatures it had to sustain during reentry were simply too high for the damaged heatshield to endure, and the orbiter burned up in the atmosphere.
Debris were scattered over several states, and a post-crash investigations team managed to recover about 38-40 percent of all shuttle components. The rest are still scattered in Texas and Louisiana, or burned up during descent.
The new component – a round aluminum power reactant storage and distribution tank – was discovered in an exposed area of Lake Nacogdoches, in Nacogdoches, eastern Texas. The location is about 160 miles northeast of Houston, where NASA's astronaut corps are headquartered.
“The only reason it's exposed is because there's a drought going on and the tank was under the lake. The tank itself is full of mud,” NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone told Space in an interview. She is based at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida.
As soon as it was alerted to the finding, the Nacogdoches police department sent relevant picture to NASA for confirmation. Members of the engineering team responsible for this system were able to identify the tank, and confirm that it belonged to Columbia.
“One of the guys had been here more than 30 years and recognized it, and said, 'That’s one of the tanks',” Malone added. The orbiter carried supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in eighteen, 1-meter spherical tanks.
This piece of debris will join the rest of the wreckage recovered from the crash sites. The remainders of Columbia are located in a climate-controlled room at the KSC Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
“We're working the plans and details out right now as to how we would get it shipped back here. We do want to collect the debris items and keep them in one place,” Malone said of NASA's course of action in the matter.
Instances such as this, when NASA is announced that debris or potential debris have been found, are very painful for the American space agencies, its employees and the families of the seven astronauts that were lost on February 1, 2003.
“It always makes you think about the accident and Columbia and the crew of course. It always does serve as a reminder,” the NASA spokeswoman added.
Columbia's STS-107 crew was made up of Commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Ilan Ramon. The latter was the first astronaut Israel ever sent to space.