With the return of the Space Shuttle Discovery in July from its crucial safety redesign flight, leading Experimental Mechanics Journal Strain examines the causes of the crash involving the space shuttle Columbia in 2003. Steve McDanels of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration writes, in this revealing article, the final conclusions as to the reasons for the destruction of Columbia.
With it being 3 years since the horrific accident that killed 7 of the world’s finest scientists and servicemen, NASA understood that it had to prove spaceflight was safe again, and its recent mission into space with Discovery was to show that spaceflight, and more crucially the USA Space Programme, was indeed safe to resume.
NASA Engineers, in the aftermath of the destruction of Columbia, have had to change significant parts of the space shuttle’s fuel tank design, in an attempt to reduce “shedding” of the spacecraft’s protective layer.
The Columbia flight was the most photographed space mission ever recorded with over 100 cameras used to scientifically document the space shuttles ascent into space. During take off a piece of foam, the size of a suitcase, detached from the rocket booster and impacted the left wing leading edge. On re-entry, after the mission, the hole in the leading edge caused erosion and ultimate failure of the wing, causing total loss of the vehicle.
With the destruction of Columbia, crucial questions had to be asked within the Engineering community. Never before had an accident of this kind occurred, and it offered “a unique opportunity to examine a multitude of components which had experienced one of the harshest environments ever encountered” says McDanels. He goes on to describe a “break up at a velocity of Mach 18 and at an altitude of 200,000ft resulting in a debris field of 1038km long, 16km wide and requiring the combined efforts of 20,000 people to recover and reconstruct the shuttle’s component parts”.
The investigation into the cataclysmic failure of one of the most complex machines ever built, is broken down and fully analysed by McDanels in this groundbreaking research to improve future spaceflight travel. The findings of his research are published in the open literature for the first time, in the August issue of the Journal Strain.
Notes to Editors:
The full article can be found at:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-1305.2006.00275.x
Images are Available courtesy of NASA from:
http://nix.nasa.gov/
Contacts:
Dr Bob Mines (Strain Editor)
Department of Engineering (Mechanical)
University of Liverpool
Brownlow Street
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Tel: +44 (0)151 7944819
Email: mines@mechnet.liv.ac.uk
Michael Hallworth (Strain Marketing)
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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OX4 2DQ
UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 476529
Email: michael.hallworth@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
