![]() ![]() ![]() Husband explains the bright images outside as Columbia zooms down through the atmosphere and gently reminds his crew to put on their gloves and check their suit pressures. Everyone is in a bright orange flight suit, with a helmet on but the visor up. Husband, a 45-year-old Air Force colonel and second-time space flier, is seen sipping from drink pouches and, along with McCool, putting on gloves. The tape has a decided home video quality to it, with the camera wobbly and pointed at times at the cockpit ceiling. Through a public relations firm, two of the widows declined to comment on the video other relatives could not be reached. The space agency acknowledged the existence of the tape Tuesday but put off broadcasting it until Friday, to make sure the astronauts' families could see it first. It reveals nothing helpful to the investigation, NASA officials say. It was found on the ground, out in the open. The tape was discovered five days after the disaster, on Feb. Three of the astronauts were seated in the lower deck and are not on the tape: Michael Anderson, David Brown and Ilan Ramon, who became the first Israeli in space with Columbia's launch on Jan. Investigators are trying to figure out what caused the breach. ![]() The accident investigation board suspects a break in the left wing let in the scorching air and led to the destruction of Columbia and the deaths of all seven astronauts. The spaceship broke apart 38 miles above Texas, 16 minutes shy of touchdown. Clark turns the camera around and smiles into it.Īs Columbia started its descent through the atmosphere, Clark pointed the camera at the overhead window to show the bright orange and yellow flashes from the superheated gases surrounding the spaceship as it streaked toward a landing in Florida, where all of their families waited. She aimed it at Kalpana Chawla, the flight engineer seated next to her, and asked: "Can you look at the camera for a second? Look at me." Chawla waves at the camera. The small digital camera was mounted at the front of the cockpit, to the right of McCool, who then handed it to Clark. He was commander of Columbia's previous mission, a year earlier, and is also part of NASA's investigation team. But the rest of the tape was destroyed in the accident, leaving only the initial 13 minutes of tape to be recovered from the reel, said astronaut Scott Altman. The camera almost certainly continued recording. The tape ends a minute later - and a full four minutes before the first sign of trouble. Says Laurel Clark, seated behind them: "What, like we did before?" drawing a big laugh. "Yeah, you definitely don't want to be outside now," Husband adds. McCool observes how bright it is outside and calls it amazing. "All right, we're at 100th of a G," Husband notes. "Yep, we're getting some G's (gravity)," replies his co-pilot, William McCool. "Looks like a blast furnace," commander Rick Husband says, referring to the bright flashes outside the cockpit windows as Columbia re-entered the atmosphere above the Pacific on Feb. ![]() Among the more than 250 videos aboard Columbia - most of them to document scientific experiments - it was the only one recovered that had any recording left. The video cassette shown on NASA TV on Friday was found three weeks ago in East Texas. They remarked on the blast-furnace heat outside - mere minutes before the superheated gases were about to penetrate the left wing and lead to their deaths. They helped one another in the cockpit, collecting empty drink bags and putting on their spacesuit gloves. SPACE CENTER, Houston - In the final minutes of their lives, Columbia's astronauts were cheerful, at times lighthearted. ![]()
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