- Title: USA: FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE SHUTTLE COLOMBIA DISASTER
- Date: 30th January 2004
- Summary: WASHINGTON D.C, UNITED STATES (FEBRUARY 2, 2003) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF NEWSPAPER HEADLINES DECLARING, "COLUMBIA LOST"
- Embargoed: 14th February 2004 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HOUSTON + NEAR ARLINGTON, TEXAS/CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA/WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Disasters,Space,Transport
- Reuters ID: LVAEOCFN39U4YQFUC33N6YVODYZG
- Story Text: NASA marks one year anniversary of Columbia shuttle explosion.
Sombre employees at NASA's Johnson Space Centre, some wiping away tears, gathered for a moment of silence on Friday to mark the first anniversary of the shuttle Columbia disaster.
About 1,000 of them stood outside under gloomy skies at the headquarters for U.S. manned spaceflight and bowed their heads in memory of the seven astronauts who died in the tragedy.
The silence was broken by a roll call of the dead, with each name followed by a recording of the tolling of a bell.
Columbia broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003 just minutes before it was scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
A visibly shaken President George W. Bush delivered the news of the disaster on national television.
"This day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors," Bush said.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board blamed the spacecraft's destruction on damage to its heat shield that occurred shortly after takeoff and said NASA had sacrificed safety to meet flight schedules.
The shuttle fleet has been grounded since the disaster, but is scheduled to resume flights in September if NASA can comply with safety recommendations from the investigators.
The Columbia crew comprised commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool and colleagues Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, Dave Brown, Laurel Clark and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.
Officials at JSC, which is home to Mission Control and the U.S. astronaut corps, chose to hold the memorial ceremony on Friday (January 30, 2004) because few workers would be at the centre on Sunday (February 1, 2004), the actual anniversary of the tragedy.
NASA allowed reporters to see debris from the space shuttle Columbia in its final resting place on Friday(January 30, 2004), a space that is part shrine and part laboratory, described by a NASA official as "the Arlington Cemetery for Columbia."
The viewing of the depository, at Cape Canaveral where the U.S. space agency launches its shuttles, took place just ahead of Sunday's first anniversary of the most recent U.S. space disaster.
The 84,147 lbs (38,168 kg) of recovered shuttle pieces are neatly labelled and bar-coded and displayed or crated with a sense of order and composure that contrasts sharply with the the violent demise of the United States' oldest shuttle craft.
Columbia, returning to Earth with a wing damaged during lift-off 16 days earlier, broke apart in the skies over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
Converted office space inside the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building, where the shuttles begin their long, slow roll-out to the launch pad, was chosen as the depository for the debris.
Some of the pieces are instantly recognizable.
The shuttle's forward window frames survived the disaster, though only fragments of the windows themselves survived. A hatch door and a complete landing gear, with four fairly intact tires beside it, are also on view.
Arlington National Cemetery, just outside Washington, is where the United States has buried its honoured war veterans since the Civil War. A memorial service for Columbia astronauts is being held there for families next Monday.
The remains of NASA's earlier flight disaster, the Challenger, lost just after its launch 18 years ago, were buried in an abandoned missile silo, but NASA decided the Columbia debris still had a useful purpose.
So far, NASA said, some 20 research institutions, mostly universities, have expressed interest in studying the debris. Although satellites routinely are destroyed in the atmosphere, the cost of collecting the debris has always prevented materials scientists from studying how various components react to the intense heat and kinetic energy of reentry.
Also stored in the room are the thousands of sympathy cards and mementos sent by school children and a banner signed before launch by all the NASA and contract employees who prepared the orbiter for launch.
President George W. Bush established a commission on Friday to make space policy recommendations about what research should be done on the moon and criteria for human space missions.
The President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy is an offshoot of Bush's call earlier this month to give NASA a new mission to renew human flight to the moon and use it as a springboard to Mars.
The nine unpaid members of the commission will examine and make recommendations on a science research agenda to be conducted on the moon and elsewhere.
In addition, they will explore technologies that could be used for human and robotic space exploration and criteria that could be used to select future destinations for human exploration, according to an executive order released by the White House.
Bush proposed two weeks ago to send humans back to the moon as early as 2015 and eventually to Mars. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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