The crew of STS-107. Back row, left to right:
David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Ilan Ramon.
Front row, left to right: Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla and William McCool.
It was the 28th spaceflight for the Columbia, the 1st Shuttle to fly in space, although not the 1st to be built.
The mission, labeled STS-107, was launched on January 16, 2003, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The crew were:
* Colonel Richard D. Husband, U.S. Air Force, mission commander, 46, from Amarillo, Texas.
* Captain David M. Brown, M.D., U.S. Navy, 46, a pilot and a surgeon, from Arlington, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C.
* Captain Laurel Clark, U.S. Navy, 41, from Racine, Wisconsin.
* Colonel Ilan Ramon, Israeli Air Force, 48, from Beersheba, Israel.
* Commander William C. McCool, U.S. Navy, 41, from San Diego, California.
* Lieutenant Colonel Michael P. Anderson, U.S. Air Force, 43, born in Plattsburgh, New York, moved around a lot as the son of an Air Force officer, spent his high school years in Cheney, Washington, outside Spokane.
* Doctor Kalpana Chawla, Ph.D., 40, from Karnal, India, lived in Boulder, Colorado as a naturalized American citizen. The only civilian on board.
For Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla and Michael Anderson, it was their 2nd spaceflight. For Willie McCool, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon, it was their 1st. Ramon and Chawla were each the 1st person from their countries of birth to fly in space.
At 1 minute, 21.7 seconds into the launch, a piece of foam broke off from the external fuel tank, and struck the reinforced carbon panels on the Shuttle's left wing. This damaged the Shuttle's thermal protection, needed to keep it from burning up upon re-entry.
They docked with the International Space Station, conducted experiments, and began their return to Earth on February 1. But the foam damage from the launch compromised the Shuttle's heat shield. The intense heat of re-entry caused the orbiter to break up, spreading debris over the States of Texas and Louisiana as it was heading for its intended landing at Cape Canaveral.
There would not be another Space Shuttle mission until July 26, 2005, when Discovery was launched on STS-114. (The numbers of the missions were often out of sequence.) The gap of 2 years, 5 months, 25 days wasn't quite as long as the gap between the destruction of the Challenger in 1986 and the next mission: 2 years, 8 months, 1 day.
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February 1, 2003 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. Football season was over: Super Bowl XXXVII had been played 6 days earlier, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beating the Oakland Raiders, 48-21. And the NHL was in its All-Star Break: The following day, the West beat the East, 6-5 at the Office Depot Center (now the FLA Live Arena) in the Miami suburb of Sunrise, Florida.
But there were 9 NBA games played that day:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, 107-100 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.
* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Detroit Pistons, 106-84 at The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan.
* The Washington Wizards beat the New Orleans Hornets, 109-104 at the MCI Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington. In the last few weeks of his career, Michael Jordan scored 45 points.
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Miami Heat, 67-65 at the American Airlines Arena (now the Kaseya Center) in Miami.
* The Indiana Pacers beat the Boston Celtics, 109-100 at the Conseco Fieldhouse (now the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Denver Nuggets, 122-100 at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas.
* The Phoenix Suns beat the Golden State Warriors, 116-107 at the America West Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Utah Jazz, 99-87 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.
* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Chicago Bulls, 90-77 at the KeyArena in Seattle.
And Arsenal beat Fulham, 2-1 at Highbury.
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