Columbia's Final Moments

A detailed rundown, from Newsday, of the events and mishaps of the shuttle Columbia's final, fateful descent into Earth's atmosphere. Here are a few tasters, but read the whole, sad, horrifying thing.

Twenty-seven truckloads of wreckage were hauled to Kennedy Space Center between Feb. 5 and May 6. More than 25,000 searchers, who scoured a debris "footprint" that was 645 miles long, found 84,900 individual pieces, about 38 percent of the space shuttle. Each piece or component was cleaned, decontaminated, bar-coded, photographed and entered into a computer database....

The foam measured 21 to 27 inches long by 12 to 18 inches wide. It was tumbling at 18 revolutions per second. Before the foam separated, the shuttle -- and the foam -- had a velocity of 1,568 mph, about twice the speed of sound. Because of its low density, the foam rapidly decelerated once in the airstream, slowing by 550 mph in that two-tenths of a second....

At 8:48:39 a.m., just four minutes and 30 seconds after Columbia had dipped into the atmosphere, a sensor mounted behind the forward spar, near the point where RCC panel 9 was bolted to the other side, measured an unusual increase in stress. The spar was softening....

On the flight deck, shuttle commander Rick Husband and rookie pilot William "Willie" McCool remained oblivious to their ship's ongoing destruction. They might have noticed the elevon movement on their forward computer displays, but the adjustments were small and would not have caused concern....

Investigators concluded the module fell intact for 38 seconds after main vehicle breakup, plunging 60,000 feet to an altitude of 26 miles before it began to disintegrate from the combined effects of aerodynamic stress and extreme temperatures. From the debris analysis, investigators believe the module was probably destroyed over a 24-second period beginning at 9:00:58 a.m. During that period, the module fell another 35,000 feet, to an altitude of 19 miles or so.

It isn't long, but it is saddening.

One thing though. The article mentions that nothing was known about the final moments of the Challenger crew after the shuttle blew up. It is my understanding that the astronauts did in fact survive the explosions and their intact crew module, with them alive inside, plummeted to the ocean with NASA recording their death screams. The tape is purported to be as horrifying as you'd imagine. The astronauts died from the impact of the module onto the ocean's surface, which was considerable. Supposedly the tape exists but hasn't and will never be made public, for obvious reasons.