Has NASA Recovered From The Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster Impact?

At about 9 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2003, Texas became the witness of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, which killed seven astronauts. The shuttle was on its way back to Earth when it hit a major technical snag and burst into flames, about 200,000 feet above Texas. Soon, people started calling in and reported the debris of the space shuttle, which landed on their properties.

Commander of the shuttle Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool and astronauts Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Dr. Laurel Clark, Dr. David Brown and first ever Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon were the victims of the disaster. Around 84,000 pounds of the scattered wreckage was collected, which is now kept at the Kennedy and is loaned to budding researchers studying space disasters, Chron reported.

Later, experts at NASA analyzed the launch footage and found out that "a piece of foam from the shuttle's orange external tank had broken off and slammed into the left wing of the orbiter," which became the cause of the infamous Columbia space shuttle disaster, FOX 11 reported.

When Columbia was trying to reenter into Earth's atmosphere, because of the hole in its wing, it failed to withstand the high temperature, which can be as high as 3,000 degrees. By the time the onboard crew realized what happened, the shuttle burst into flames.

Further investigation revealed that NASA had underestimated the possible outcomes of the foam debris during Columbia launch as well as few other launches. When the news surfaced, then President George W. Bush directed NASA to retire the indigenously developed space shuttle fleet. The Discovery space shuttle launch in July 2011 was the last of the mission.

Ever since, NASA and American astronauts depend on Russian space shuttles to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Presently, the Russian Soyuz space shuttle is used by American astronauts, but the collaboration may most likely come to an end in 2018. Russia has threatened to stop lending its space shuttles to American astronauts. Until that happens, NASA waits for successful space shuttle test launches by private space companies like SpaceX, so that America can stop depending of foreign space shuttles.