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Columbia Disaster In its 23-year history, the space shuttle program has seen exhilarating highs and devastating lows. The fleet has taken astronauts on dozens of successful missions, resulting in immeasurable scientific gains. But this success has had a serious cost The Space Shuttle Columbia crashed on Saturday 1st, February 2003 and was the second Space Shuttle Disaster and the first shuttle lost on landing. Space Shuttle Columbia was launched on January 16th, 2003 at 9.39am CST . Columbia (Flight STS-107) was on a 16-day science research mission in Earth orbit, which performed experiments in space. The crew of Space Shuttle Columbia consisted of 7 astronauts: - Rick D. Husband - Commander 7-8 minutes before the failure, gauges started to loose readings in Columbia 's left wing, left landing gear brake system and tyre. 7.59am (CST) temperature and pressure gauges went off scale. 8am - All vehicle data was lost at 207,135 ft above the Earth about 12,500 mph when the Columbia Space Shuttle broke up over north-central Texas . It was about 16 minutes prior to its scheduled landing at Florida 's Kennedy Space Center . The next section will inform us more about the astronauts.
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