Columbia Crash - Theories Abound On The Causes

There has been no end to the spate of new theories emerging every other day on the probable cause of the crash of the ill-fated Columbia shuttle. The shuttle was traveling at 19,300 kmph at an altitude of 63 km as it disintegrated on February 1, 2003 in the searing heat of re-entry, for reasons still unknown. All seven astronauts were killed.

One theory suggested that Columbia broke up in a mysterious area of the upper atmosphere once so little understood and difficult to study that scientists dubbed it the ‘ignorosphere’. The region is of particular interest not only because that is where the disintegration occurred but also because of a time-exposure image taken by an amateur astronomer showing a shake of purplish light corkscrewing through the shuttle’s hot going trail as it crossed over California.

Columbia was crossing through the mesosphere, which extends from about 48 to 80 km above the surface of the earth. It is also called the ionosphere, because of the presence of free electrons- or ions. "We are discovering the middle atmosphere has got a lot of phenomena," said Walt Lyons, president of the FMA Research in Fort Collins, Colorado on February 10, 2003. "The key message here is that there may be more things going up there that we just do not understand or have no inkling of them yet".

In a report published last year, NASA researchers said experts have "so far" concluded that the electromagnetic phenomena or ice crystals from the highest clouds are not known to pose a danger to shuttles on re-entry. Not much remains known about this part of the atmosphere. The region has been difficult to study, because it is too high for balloons and aircraft, yet its too low and the air too heavy for satellites, which would be unable to stay in orbit because of the drag, according to Umran Inan, a physicist at work at Stanford University.

One safety engineer seemed to have warned just two days before the Columbia crash about risk of "catastrophic" failures from extreme heat causing the shuttle tyres to burst inside the spacecraft. And searchers did find one of Columbia’s tyres near Hemphill, Texas, about 225 km away from Houston. The tyre had sustained a massive split across its tread, but is not known whether the tyre had been damaged abroad Columbia or when it struck the ground.

Two weeks after the crash, the investigation board publicity put forward just one hypothesis: that a breach in the left wing likely allowed super-heated gases to penetrate the space shuttle as it descended through the atmosphere. The temperature surged in the left landing-gear wheel well just before the ship’s destruction.