Kalpana Chawla’s ‘tragic’ mission a lesson for Sunita Williams’ Starliner: The story of a ‘risky’ return to Earth | Mint

NASA Starliner astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will not return home on a Boeing spacecraft. Starliner will return without a crew until September 6, while the two astronauts will reach Earth on a SpaceX spacecraft in February next year. What might have prompted the US space agency to take such a step? Past mistakes and two space shuttle disasters are being cited as the reason for this.

“We have made mistakes in the past. We lost two spacecraft because we did not have a culture in place to let information go,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on August 24 as he announced that NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore would return home on a SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft, skipping Boeing’s Starliner.

By “two space shuttles,” Nelson likely meant the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger and the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia.

The Columbia disaster is said to have “changed NASA forever.” The mission was called STS-107 and Kalpana Chawla was a part of it. Mission specialist Chawla was among the seven astronauts who lost their lives minutes before landing on Earth in 2003. She was the first Indian-American astronaut and the first Indian woman to go to space.

Remembering Kalpana Chawla’s STS-107 mission

STS-107 was the first shuttle mission in 2003. The Columbia space shuttle launched on January 16, 2003. It was a 17-day mission that included several microgravity experiments. It was “entirely a multidisciplinary microgravity and Earth science research mission” and involved more than 80 international experiments.

There were 7 crew members:

1. Rick D. Husband, Commander
2. William C. McCool, pilot
3. Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist
4. David M. Brown, Mission Specialist
5. Laurel B. Clark, Mission Specialist
6. Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander
7. Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist

Everything was going well until the accident during the return mission. On its way back to Earth, the orbiter and its seven crew members were lost about 15 minutes before Columbia landed at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in the US, NASA reported.

‘Sad for the nation’

The landing was planned for February 1, 2003. NASA reported that upon re-entry the shuttle orbiter, Columbia, “suffered a catastrophic failure due to a crack that occurred during launch…”. Columbia and crew were lost during re-entry over eastern Texas at about 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

“The shuttle lost communications and tracking at about 9 a.m. while traveling at about 12,500 mph (Mach 18) and at an altitude of about 203,000 feet over north central Texas. No communications or tracking information was received at Mission Control thereafter,” NASA had said then.

Then-NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said, “This is truly a sad day for the NASA family, for the families of the astronauts who flew on STS-107, and for the nation as well.”

What caused the Columbia accident? It started during launch.

NASA is investigating the foam strike during the launch. Space.com reported that about 82 seconds after Columbia lifted off from the ground, a piece of foam fell off the “bipod ramp,” part of the structure that connects the external tank to the shuttle.

“Video of the launch showed foam hitting Columbia’s left wing. It was later found that a hole in the left wing caused atmospheric gases to enter the shuttle, damaging sensors and ultimately destroying Columbia and the astronauts inside,” the report said.

Kalpana Chawla’s space shuttle Columbia broke into 80,000 pieces in the sky

Just before the accident, Columbia was traveling near Dallas at more than 18 times the speed of sound. Mission Control made several attempts to contact the astronauts, but they were unsuccessful.

Space.com reports that 12 minutes later, mission controllers received a call. The caller said that a television network had shown video of the shuttle breaking up in the sky.

The incident was followed by a seven-month investigation and a four-month search in Texas to recover debris. In the months that followed, searchers recovered more than 83,000 pieces of debris.

“About 85,000 pieces of orbiter debris were sent to KSC and placed in the Columbia debris hangar near the Shuttle Landing Facility,” NASA said. “About 38 percent of the orbiter Columbia was ultimately recovered,” the US space agency said.

Returning to Earth from space is always ‘risky’

Scientists have repeatedly reiterated that human space flights are risky and re-entering the atmosphere is even riskier. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on August 24, “Space flight is risky, even when it is the safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine.”

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S Somanath had earlier said the return journey is “more dangerous than the onward journey”.

ISRO chief explains why re-entry is risky

Explaining the process of India’s future lunar mission, Chandrayaan 4, landing back on Earth, Somnath had said that landing on Earth is “much more difficult than landing on the lunar surface” and “equally challenging”.

Somnath said this is because “there is no atmosphere on the Moon, but there is atmosphere on Earth”, adding that “during the return mission we will have to overcome atmospheric heat etc.”

Learning from past failures and risky re-entry procedures, Bill Nelson said, “The decision to keep Butch and Suni on board the International Space Station and return Boeing’s Starliner uncrewed is a result of our commitment to safety: it’s our core value and our goal.”

Kalpana Chawla’s mission, Sunita Williams’ Starliner and additional risks

The launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which carried NASA’s Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station on June 5, was delayed twice. Despite problems with the spacecraft, it was launched on June 5 and encountered anomalies during the journey.

NASA said the Starliner was previously scheduled to launch on May 6, 2024, but was delayed “due to a suspected oxygen relief valve in the Centaur second stage of the Atlas V rocket.”

During a visit to the International Space Station on June 5, NASA reported that some of the spacecraft’s thrusters did not perform as expected, while multiple leaks were observed in Starliner’s helium system.

Meanwhile, Kalpana Chawla’s mission also had a hitch during launch – when foam falling from the external tank hit the reinforced carbon panel on the underside of the left wing. This ultimately led to tragedy.

At a time when NASA and Boeing are still working to identify the root cause of Starliner’s problems and fully understand the spacecraft, it would be risky to carry astronauts back on the same capsule that was plagued with anomalies during and even before launch.

ISRO chief Somnath reacted to Sunita Williams’ mission by saying that “some anomalies were observed in Starliner, and [it appears to me that] They [NASA] “We don’t want to take risks… because it has had some problems in the past, even before its launch,” he said.

Starliner ready to return without crew

NASA and Boeing will begin the process to undock the unmanned Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station no earlier than 6:04 p.m. (3:30 a.m. EST) on Friday, Sept. 6, depending on weather and operational preparations.

After undocking, the Starliner will take about six hours to reach the landing zone at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. “The spacecraft will descend under parachutes at approximately 12:03 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7, and land with airbags inflated to cushion the impact,” NASA said.

Meanwhile, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will return on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission in February 2025.