Jonathan's Space Report No. 493 2003 Feb 8, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *********** SPACESHIP COLUMBIA DESTROYED DURING REENTRY *************** Orbiter OV-102 Columbia was lost 15 minutes before its scheduled landing on Feb 1 at the end of the STS-107 microgravity mission. The seven astronauts were killed when the left wing failed and the spaceship broke apart. Debris has been found over a wide area centered in east Texas near the Palestine, Texas region (site of NASA's balloon launch facility), and stretching from Fort Worth eastward into Louisiana. Columbia was in a 272 x 289 km x 39.0 deg orbit when it fired the OMS engines for deorbit at 1315 UTC for 2min 38s. This dropped the orbit to around 1 x 275 km x 39.0 deg. At 1344 UTC Columbia reached NASA's nominal entry interface at an altitude of 122 km and began the transition from a spaceship to an aircraft. The descent continued with the first hypersonic slalom turn, as the Orbiter crossed the California coast. Up to this point, as Columbia approached maximum reentry heating, everything appeared well. Multiple on-board sensors in the area of the left wing stopped working or showed temperature rises beginning at 1352 UTC, as ground-based observers began to see material apparently breaking off from the fiery trail of the vehicle. Near to 1400 UTC left wing drag increased, causing rapid changes in the required trim. At this point the vehicle appears to have broken into multiple large pieces, either due to structural and thermal failure or to loss of attitude (which I understand would induce structural failure within about a second at this point in the flight). Loss of good signal was at 60 km altitude at Mach 18.3, at 1359:22 UTC (according to early reports), a time 15d22h20m22s into the mission. A further 32s of partial telemetry may indicate that the vehicle did not break up until 1359:54 UTC; these times are likely to be revised, and I haven't seen any accurate times on the many amateur videos taken of the breakup. An Aviation Week report claims USAF imagery from the ground showed structural damage to the leading edge of the left wing, indicating the thermal protection system in the wing glove area may have failed. The photo, shown at the Feb 7 briefing, shows an irregular leading edge on the left wing and a cleaner leading edge on the right wing, but it's not clear to me whether that is just an artifact of pixelization noise as opposed to really showing true features on the Shuttle. At this point I remain unconvinced the photo tells us much. One possibility is that the impact of a 1 kg, 0.6m piece of external tank foam 80s into launch may have caused damage, although program officials still claim this is unlikely. I expect a clearer picture of what went wrong will emerge over the next one to two months. It will take longer to know what the impact is for the human spaceflight program as a whole. Condolences to all members of the Shuttle team on the loss of the seven astronauts of the STS-107 crew. All of us with any connection to the space program remain in shock. And kudos to Ron Dittemore, Shuttle Program Manager, for an exceptional performance at the press briefings; despite obvious stress he gave with great dignity honest, clear and detailed assessments of what is currently known and avoided the triteness and euphemism (e.g. "contingency") of much of the rest of NASA's coverage. The fact that the press sometimes misreported what he said is too bad, but I think he helped the world understand what an engineering accident investigation is like, and NASA can be proud that it has representatives like him. One important note: the STS-107 press kit consistently and erroneously refers to the mission as carrying the SLWT (super light weight tank) version of the External Tank. This is a significant error; STS-107's External Tank, ET-93, was actually the older LWT (light weight tank), used for only the second time since 1998. For the record, other fatal accidents during the course of a spaceflight: 1967 Vladimir Komarov, Soyuz-1 crash landing 1967 Mike Adams, X-15-3 reentry control loss 1971 Georgiy Dobrovol'skiy, Vadislav Volkov, Viktor Patsaev, Soyuz-11 reentry depressurization 1986 Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Challenger launch accident. It's important to remember that there have also been a large number of very close shaves, including launch aborts, on-board fires and collisions, and a variety of reentry problems. Human spaceflight is a dangerous business and is likely to remain so for the immediate future. The Shuttle program is now grounded indefinitely. This also impacts the International Space Station program and the already-delayed Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (which would have been flown by Columbia). There are three remaining orbiters (Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour) and it would not be practical to build a replacement; some acceleration of efforts to design a successor vehicle seems likely. Shuttle and Station -------------------- Aboard the Space Station, Bowersox and Pettit made a spacewalk from the Quest airlock on Jan 15. The airlock reached vacuum at about 1214 UTC, with hatch open after some difficulties at 1246 UTC and suit battery power at 1250 UTC. The astronauts deployed the central thermal radiator on the P1 truss and moved a tool box to the CETA cart. The hatch was closed around 1938 UTC with repress at 1941 UTC, for a duration of 7h27m (depress/repress), 6h52m (hatch open/close) or 6h51m (NASA rule). Columbia was launched on mission STS-107 on Jan 16 at 1539 UTC. At 1547 UTC it reached a 78 x 272 km orbit and the external tank separated. At 1620 UTC the OMS-2 burn raised the orbit to 270 x 283 km. Columbia carried out its microgravity research mission for two weeks. Progress M-47 was launched on Feb 2 and docked with the rear port of the Station's Zvezda module at 1449 UTC on Feb 4, delivering enough supplies to keep the Station crew aboard until June if need be. Recent Launches --------------- NASA's SORCE satellite was launched by a Pegasus XL from Cape Canaveral on Jan 29. SORCE carries two main instruments, TSIM (the Total Solar Irradiance Monitor) and SOLSTICE (Solar-Stellar Intercomparison Experiment), to study the total solar output for climate studies. It is operated by the University of Colorado/Boulder. The L-1011 carrier plane took off from the Cape Canaveral Skid Strip runway at 1917 UTC on Jan 25. Drop over the Atlantic at 2013 UTC was followed by successful burn of all three Pegasus XL stages and orbit insertion at 2022 UTC into a 610 x 649 km x 40.0 deg orbit. The satellite was built by Orbital Sciences and uses the LeoStar-2 bus; its mass is 290 kg. Navstar GPS vehicle SVN 56 was launched from Cape Canaveral on Jan 29. The Boeing Delta 7925 entered a 174 x 200 km x 36.9 deg orbit at 1816 UTC; the second stage then restarted to enter a 187 x 1157 km x 37.2 deg orbit and separated from the Star 48 third stage which put the GPS satellite in a 182 x 20282 km x 39.0 deg transfer orbit. The second stage then restarted at least twice more to enter a 703 x 806 km x 39.6 deg orbit. At around 1000 UTC on Jan 30, the Air Force Research Lab's XSS-10 experimental inspector satellite separated from the second stage and made a series of 35-meter re-approaches to the stage, using a hydrazine propulsion system for stationkeeping and an experimental camera to image the stage. Meanwhile, GPS SVN 56 fired its apogee motor to circularize and raise inclination, entering a 20155 x 20344 km x 55.0 deg orbit. It will replace SVN 22 in the navigation constellation. The first Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus Lite rocket was launched on Feb 6 from Vandenberg. The Taurus Lite made a suborbital flight with an apogee of 1800 km; it is basically a stretched Pegasus without wings, the first stage being an Orion 50SXLG motor derived from the Pegasus XL first stage and Taurus second stage. Taurus Lite, also known as the Orbital Boost Vehicle (OBV) is currently planned for use as a missile defense interceptor. Errata --------- Shenzhou 4 was of course launched from Jiuquan, not Taiyuan. ICESAT has a mass of 959 kg full and 882 kg dry; the 300 kg quoted earlier was for the science instrument alone. Spacewarn Bulletin reports the mass of the Trailblazer Dummy satellite is 420 kg. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Dec 2 2205 MEPSI - Endeavour, LEO Technology 52B Dec 5 0242 TDRS 10 Atlas IIA Canaveral SLC36 Comms 55A Dec 11 2221 Stentor ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms F03 Hot Bird 7 ) Comms F03 Dec 14 0131 Midori 2 ) H2A-202 Tanegashima Rem.Sensing 56A WEOS ) Rem.Sensing 56C FedSat ) Technology 56B MuLabSat ) Technology 56D Dec 17 2304 NSS 6 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comms 57A Dec 20 1700 Trailblazer ) Dnepr Baykonur LC109 Dummy 58E Latinsat A ) Comms 58H Latinsat B ) Comms 58B Saudisat 1C ) Comms 58C Unisat-2 ) Technology 58D Rubin-2 ) Technology 58A Dec 24 1220 Kosmos-2393 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC16/2 Early warn 59A Dec 25 0737 Kosmos-2394 ) Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC81/23 Navigation 60A Kosmos-2395 ) 60B Kosmos-2396 ) 60C Dec 29 1640 Shenzhou 4 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 61A Dec 29 2316 Nimiq 2 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC81/24 Comms 62A Jan 6 1419 Coriolis Titan II Vandenberg SLC4W Environment 01A Jan 13 0045 ICESAT ) Delta 7320-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Environment 02A CHIPSat ) Astronomy 02B Jan 16 1539 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 03A Spacehab ) Lab Jan 25 2013 SORCE Pegasus XL Canaveral RW30/12 Solar obs 04A Jan 29 1806 GPS SVN 56 ) Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17 Navigation 05A XSS-10 ) Technology 05B Feb 2 1259 Progress M-47 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 06A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Destroyed STS-107 2003 Jan 16 Spacehab OV-103 Discovery OPF Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis VAB STS-114 Unknown ISS ULF1 OV-105 Endeavour OPF STS-115 Unknown ISS 12A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'