Exactly 20 years ago, seven astronauts died when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth. On MorningEdition, NASA’s deputy administrator Pam Melroy looked back on the tragedy and how it shaped the agency.
, and so it's going to arrive within a second of when it's predicted," she recalled."And so it was a moment where we all looked around and said, 'How could this be happening? The space shuttle isn't here.' And that's when we realized it wasn't coming back."Columbia Space Shuttle debris covers the floor of the RLV Hangar Kennedy Space Center, Florida in May 2003.
A piece of foam insulation had broken off the shuttle's propellant tank and hit the edge of its left wing just over a minute into its Jan. 16 launch, which was captured on camera. But the exact location and extent of the damage was not clearly visible to engineers, and NASA management reportedly did not address their concerns during the shuttle's time in space because they believed little could be done about it.
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