Order Code RS21408
Updated March 6, 2003
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia: Quick Facts
and Issues for Congress
Marcia S. Smith
Specialist in Aerospace and Telecommunications Policy
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Summary
On February 1, 2003, NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart while returning
to Earth from a 16-day science mission in orbit. All seven astronauts — six Americans
and one Israeli — were killed. An investigation is underway. This report provides
quick facts about Columbia, her crew, the STS-107 mission, the status of the
investigation, and a brief discussion of issues for Congress. Additional information on
the space shuttle program is available in CRS Issue Brief IB93062, CRS Report
RS21411, and CRS Report RS21419. This report will be updated often.
The Loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia
The space shuttle Columbia was launched on its STS-107 mission on January 16,
2003. After completing a 16-day scientific research mission, Columbia started its descent
to Earth on the morning of February 1, 2003. As it descended from orbit, approximately
16 minutes before its scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center, FL, Columbia broke
apart over northeastern Texas. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. They were
Commander Rick Husband; Pilot William McCool; Mission Specialists Michael P.
Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, and Laurel Clark; and payload specialist
Ilan Ramon, an Israeli. The last communication with Columbia was at about 09:00 EST.
The shuttle was at an altitude of 207,135 feet, traveling at a speed of Mach 18.3 (about
13,000 miles per hour).
Accident Investigation
NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe immediately appointed an internal “Mishap
Investigation Board,” and also an external group, the “Columbia Accident Investigation
Board” (CAIB), to investigate the accident. NASA created a Web site where many of the
materials the agency is releasing to the public can be obtained
[http://www.nasa.gov/Columbia]. The CAIB has its own Web site [http://www.caib.us].
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

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The CAIB is chaired by Adm. (Ret.) Harold Gehman, who co-chaired the
independent commission that investigated the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. The
other members are: RADM Stephen Turcotte, Commander, U.S. Naval Safety Center;
Maj. Gen. John Barry, Director, Plans and Programs, Headquarters Air Force Materiel
Command; Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hess, Commander, U.S. Air Force Chief of Safety; Dr.
James Hallock, Aviation Safety Division Chief, U.S. Department of Transportation;
Steven Wallace, Director of Accident Investigation, Federal Aviation Administration;
Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, Commander 21st Space Wing; Scott Hubbard, Director, NASA
Ames Research Center; Roger Tetrault, retired from McDermott International; MIT
professor of aeronautics and astronautics Dr. Sheila Widnall, former Secretary of the Air
Force; former astronaut and physicist Dr. Sally Ride; Nobel Prize winning physicist Dr.
Douglas Osheroff; and Dr. John Logsdon, Director of the Space Policy Institute at
George Washington University. NASA astronaut Michael Bloomfield is an advisor.
Bryan O’Connor, NASA Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance (a
former astronaut), is an ex officio member; and NASA Chief Engineer Theron Bradley,
is the Executive Secretary. NASA revised the Board’s charter three times to clarify its
independence from NASA, primarily in response to congressional concerns. However,
the CAIB was created by NASA, includes NASA representatives, and new Board
members must be appointed by the NASA Administrator, so concerns about its
independence continue. In a February 28 letter, NASA Administrator O’Keefe declined
to reassign senior space shuttle personnel working on the investigation back to their
regular duties as requested by the Board. However, Mr. O’Keefe and Adm. Gehman
subsequently indicated that the issue had been satisfactorily resolved and the personnel
are being, or will be, reassigned NASA transitioned responsibility for the investigation
to the CAIB on February 6. There is no time limit on the Board’s investigation.
NASA and the CAIB are working through a “fault tree” of possibilities of what may
have happened to Columbia, and no conclusion has been reached. The Board is focused
on data from sensors in Columbia’s left wing in the minutes prior to the orbiter’s break
up. The first indications of trouble were the loss of data from sensors in that wing, and
other sensors registering rising temperatures. Preliminary analysis by NASA indicates
that the superheated gas (plasma) surrounding the shuttle as it descended through the
atmosphere must have reached the interior of the wing, rather than the heat being
transferred through the structure as could happen if some of the “tiles” that form part of
the thermal protection system were missing. Thus, some theorize that the reinforced
carbon-carbon (RCC) along the front (leading edge) of the wing, or the landing gear door
or seals around it, may have been breached. The Board is studying the data, and debris
recovered from the accident, to “follow the heat” and determine what happened.
How and where the presumed breach occurred is not known. One theory is that the
left wing may have been damaged by objects that fell off the shuttle’s External Tank1 82
1 The Space Transportation System (STS)—the space shuttle—consists of an airplane-like
orbiter, two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) on either side of the orbiter, and a large cylindrical
External Tank that holds the fuel for the orbiter’s main engines. The SRBs detach from the
orbiter about 2 ½ minutes after launch when their fuel is spent, fall into the ocean, and are
recovered for refurbishment and reuse. The External Tank is not reused. It is jettisoned as the
(continued...)

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seconds after launch and struck the orbiter in that area. The day after the launch, NASA
experts reviewing footage of the launch discerned something hitting the orbiter. Analysis
by the Boeing Company initially focused on one object, believed to be foam insulation,
but by January 24, Boeing’s presentation slides indicated that three objects were involved.
In the days immediately following the Columbia accident, NASA officials reported that
one 20x16x6 inch piece of insulating foam, weighing 2.67 pounds, was at issue and the
Boeing analysis concluded it created no safety of flight issue. E-mail exchanges among
NASA and contractor employees during STS-107’s flight, released by NASA under the
Freedom of Information Act, indicate continued discussion of theoretical damage
scenarios stemming from such an impact until the day before the landing. Other theories
are that ice or a heavier insulating material hit the orbiter during launch, or space debris
hit it while it was in orbit.
If tile damage was the problem, the astronauts could not have repaired the tiles in
orbit. Astronauts can make emergency spacewalks into the shuttle’s cargo bay, but cannot
maneuver around to the belly of the orbiter where the tiles are located, and there is no
method to repair a damaged tile on orbit, according to NASA. However, NASA
Administrator O’Keefe rejected the notion that nothing could have been done to save
Columbia if they had known of a life-threatening contingency.
Because of the threat of terrorism, and the presence of an Israeli astronaut on the
mission, questions have arisen as to whether the loss of Columbia could be attributed to
terrorism. At this time, government officials stress that there is no evidence that the
tragedy could have been caused by terrorists.
Space Shuttle Columbia
Columbia was one of four flightworthy reusable space shuttle orbiters in NASA’s
fleet. The others are Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. A fifth orbiter, Challenger, was
lost in a 1986 accident. Another orbiter, Enterprise, was used for approach and landing
tests in the 1970s and was not designed to travel in space.
Columbia was the first spaceflight-worthy orbiter built for NASA by Rockwell
International (the space division of Rockwell, which built the orbiters, was later bought
by Boeing). It was used for the very first shuttle flight on April 12, 1981. The STS-107
mission that ended tragically on February 1, 2003 was Columbia’s 28th flight. Although
Columbia is the oldest orbiter, Discovery has been used for more flights (30). Orbiters
are periodically taken out of service for maintenance and overhaul. Columbia underwent
an inspection and retrofit program from August 1991-February 1992, was in an “orbiter
maintenance down period” in 1994-1995, and an “orbiter major modification” (OMM)
period in 1999-2001. Its first flight after the OMM was STS-109 in March 2001, a Hubble
Space Telescope servicing mission. STS-107 was its second flight after the OMM.
1 (...continued)
orbiter reaches Earth orbit, and disintegrates as it falls into the Indian Ocean.

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Columbia’s STS-107 Crew2
Commander: Air Force Colonel Rick D. Husband, b. July 12, 1957, Amarillo, TX.
Married, two children. Col. Husband was making his second flight into space, having
served as pilot of STS-96 in 1999. He received a BS in mechanical engineering from
Texas Tech University in 1980 and a MS in mechanical engineering from California State
University-Fresno in 1990.
Pilot: Navy Commander William “Willie” McCool, b. September 23, 1961, San
Diego, CA. Married, three children. Commander McCool was making his first
spaceflight. He received a BS in applied science from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1983,
an MS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland in 1985, and an MS in
aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1992.
Payload Commander/Mission Specialist 3: Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael
P. Anderson, b. December 25, 1959, Plattsburgh, NY. Married. two children. Col.
Anderson was making his second spaceflight, having served on the crew of STS-89. He
received a BS in physics/astronomy from the University of Washington in 1981 and an
MS in physics from Creighton University in 1990.
Mission Specialist 1: Navy Captain David M. Brown, b. April 16, 1956, Arlington,
VA. Single. Capt. Brown was making his first spaceflight. He received a BS in biology
from the College of William and Mary in 1978 and a doctorate in medicine from Eastern
Virginia Medical School in 1982.
Mission Specialist 2: Dr. Kalpana Chawla, b. July 1, 1961, Karnal, India. Married. Dr.
Chawla is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and was making her second spaceflight. She
received a BS in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, in
1982; an MS in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas in 1984; and a PhD
in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in 1988.
Mission Specialist 4: Navy Commander (captain-select) Laurel Blair Salton Clark,
b. March 10, 1961, Ames, Iowa, but considered Racine, WI as her hometown. Married,
one child. Commander Clark was making her first spaceflight. She received a BS in
zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983 and a doctorate in medicine
from the same school in 1987.
Payload Specialist: Colonel, Israeli Air Force, Ilan Ramon, b. June 20, 1954, Tel
Aviv, Israel. Married, four children. Col. Ramon was making his first spaceflight. He
received a BS in electronic and computer engineering from the University of Tel Aviv,
Israel, in 1987.
The STS-107 Mission3
2 Biographies taken from NASA official biographies, supplemented by media reports.
3 Summarized from NASA’s Press Kit for the STS-107 mission available at
[http://spaceflight.nasa.gov] and news accounts.

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STS-107 was a scientific research mission that, unlike most current shuttle launches,
was not related to the International Space Station (ISS) program. The launch of STS-107
had been delayed for a variety of reasons since the summer of 2001. STS-107 carried a
SPACEHAB Double Module in the shuttle’s cargo bay, which allows astronauts to
conduct scientific experiments in a “shirt-sleeve” environment. The crew, working
round-the-clock, conducted a research program involving 32 payloads, with 59 separate
investigations. SPACEHAB marketed 18% of the module’s capacity to international and
industry commercial users, while NASA experiments made up the remaining 82%.
Students from six schools in Australia, China, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, and the United
States probed the effects of spaceflight on spiders, silkworms, inorganic crystals, fish,
bees, and ants, respectively. Other experiments were attached to the outside of the
SPACEHAB Double Module, or on a bridge-like structure mounted across Columbia’s
payload bay. The latter, called Fast Reaction Experiments Enabling Science, Technology,
Applications and Research (FREESTAR), included the Mediterranean Israeli Dust
Experiment which involved observations of Israel from space. Some of the research
required analysis of specimens and data sets after the shuttle returned to Earth, and they
were destroyed along with the crew and orbiter. Other data, however, were transmitted
to ground-based researchers during the flight, so some of the crew’s scientific research
did survive them. Quantifying the amount is difficult.
Previous Crew Fatalities During Space Missions
The United States has suffered two other spaceflight-related accidents that caused
astronaut fatalities. On January 27, 1967, the three-man crew of the first Apollo mission
died when a fire erupted in their Apollo command module during a pre-launch test. The
three astronauts were Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. A
NASA investigation determined that electrical arcing in spacecraft wiring caused the fire.
Modifications were made to the Apollo design and test procedures before Apollo flights
resumed 21 months later.
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger (STS 51-L) exploded 73 seconds
after launch, killing all seven astronauts aboard: Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael Smith,
Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis (a payload specialist from
Hughes Aircraft), and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. President Reagan appointed a
special commission to investigate the accident, chaired by former Secretary of State
William Rogers. The Rogers Commission determined that cold weather at the launch site
caused a rubber “O-ring” in one of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) to fail, allowing
gases to escape, resulting in a catastrophic explosion. The shuttle system was grounded
for 32 months while NASA redesigned the SRBs. The shuttle returned to flight in
September 1988. Congress appropriated $2.1 billion to build a replacement for
Challenger. The new orbiter, Endeavour, made its first flight in May 1992.
Four Soviet cosmonauts also died during spaceflights. Cosmonaut Vladimir
Komarov died during the first Soyuz flight on April 24, 1969. The spacecraft’s parachute
tangled during descent and it struck the ground with great force, killing Colonel Komarov.
Soviet human spaceflights were suspended for 18 months while the Soviets investigated
and remedied the problem. Three cosmonauts died on Soyuz 11 on June 29, 1971 when
an improperly sealed valve allowed the spacecraft’s atmosphere to vent into space. The
cosmonauts—Georgiy Dobrovolskiy, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev— were not

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wearing spacesuits, and were asphyxiated. There were no Soviet human spaceflights for
27 months while modifications were made to the spacecraft.
Issues for Congress
As the causes of the Columbia tragedy are investigated, Congress and the Bush
Administration are facing a number of issues. A forthcoming CRS report will explore
some of these issues in more detail, but the following is a brief list of questions likely to
frame the debate. A key factor in evaluating many of these questions is how long the
shuttle system may be grounded. That will not be known until the cause of the accident
is determined and remedial steps identified.
! Was funding for the shuttle program adequate to ensure shuttle safety?
! Did NASA adequately respond to concerns expressed over the past
several years by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel and others (see
CRS Report RS 21419) that the shuttle program was under stress due to
funding and workforce constraints?
! Did NASA adequately investigate damage that might have been caused
to Columbia’s heat resistant tiles by objects that fell from the External
Tank during launch? If Columbia had been damaged, was there anything
NASA could have done to ensure the safe return of Columbia’s crew,
such as changing the reentry profile or launching a rescue mission with
another orbiter?
! Is the Columbia Accident Investigation Board the best group to assist
NASA in this investigation, or should non-government experts be
included? Should the White House establish a “blue-ribbon”
commission as was done following the Challenger tragedy in 1986?
! What are the funding implications of the Columbia accident for the space
shuttle program, and for the space station program, which relies on the
shuttle for assembly and operation?
! What strategy should guide operation of the International Space Station
while the space shuttle system is grounded? Should permanent
occupancy of the space station be suspended until the shuttle system is
operating again, or should the space station partners (the United States,
Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada) rely on Russian Soyuz and Progress
spacecraft to bring crews and cargo to space station?
! If the decision is made to rely on Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft
beyond those that Russian already has agreed to provide at no cost to the
other partners, who will pay for them? In this context, it is important to
recall that the Iran Nonproliferation Act (P.L. 106-178) prohibits NASA
from making payments to Russia, in cash or in kind, in connection with
the space station program unless the President certifies to Congress that
Russia is not proliferating nuclear or missile technologies to Iran.
! Should a replacement orbiter be built? If so, how much will it cost and
how long will it take? If not, can NASA service the Hubble Space
Telescope and continue assembly and operation of the space station with
only three orbiters?
! What changes are needed to NASA’s recently revised Integrated Space
Transportation Plan? Should efforts to develop an Orbital Space Plane,

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announced in that plan, be accelerated instead of building a replacement
for Columbia? To what extent can those plans be accelerated?
! Are the benefits of human spaceflight worth the risks and costs?
A joint hearing between the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Science
Committee was held on February 12, 2003. The House Science Committee held a hearing
on implications of the Columbia accident on NASA programs and budget on February 27.

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