Episode 2098
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
Wed, 2023-Feb-01 02:15 UTC
Length - 2:40
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Wednesday, 1 February 2023 is Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was a fatal accident in the United States space program that occurred on February 1, 2003. During the STS-107 mission, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board. The mission was the second that ended in disaster in the Space Shuttle program after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, which killed all seven crew members during ascent.
During the STS-107 launch, a piece of the insulative foam broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the thermal protection system tiles on the orbiter's left wing. Similar foam shedding had occurred during previous Space Shuttle launches, causing damage that ranged from minor to near-catastrophic, but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious. Before reentry, NASA managers had limited the investigation, reasoning that the crew could not have fixed the problem if it had been confirmed. When Columbia reentered the atmosphere of Earth, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the orbiter to become unstable and break apart.
After the disaster, Space Shuttle flight operations were suspended for more than two years, as they had been after the Challenger disaster. Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) was paused until flights resumed in July 2005 with STS-114. NASA made several technical and organizational changes to subsequent missions, including adding an on-orbit inspection to determine how well the orbiter's thermal protection system (TPS) had endured the ascent, and keeping a designated rescue mission ready in case irreparable damage was found. Except for one mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, subsequent Space Shuttle missions were flown only to the ISS to allow the crew to use it as a haven if damage to the orbiter prevented safe reentry; the remaining orbiters were retired after the ISS was finished.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:15 UTC on Wednesday, 1 February 2023.
For the full current version of the article, see Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on Wikipedia.
This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit wikioftheday.com for our archives, sister podcasts, and swag. Please subscribe to never miss an episode. You can also follow @WotDpod on Twitter.
Abulsme Productions produces the current events podcast Curmudgeon's Corner as well. Check it out in your podcast player of choice.
This has been Arthur Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
|
|
Buy WotD Stuff!!
