Space shuttle Columbia breaks up on reentry by Philip Chien Special to The Jerusalem Post February 2, 2003 Space shuttle Columbia broke apart in flames 200,000 feet (about 61 km.) over Texas on Saturday, killing all seven astronauts just minutes before they were to glide to a landing in Florida. "Columbia is lost; there are no survivors," US President George W. Bush announced. It was too early to speculate about what destroyed the shuttle, said Bill Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space flight. A senior US official said there was no immediate indication of terrorism. The six Americans and Israel's first astronaut aboard Columbia were 16 minutes from landing when the shuttle broke apart. They had been expected to touch down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:16 a.m. At 9 a.m., Mission Control abruptly lost all data and voice contact with the shuttle and crew. At the same time, residents of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana reported hearing "a big bang" and seeing flames in the sky. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, his voice breaking at times as he spoke, said Bush had talked to the families of the astronauts. "We trust the prayers of the nation will be with them and with their families," he said. "A more courageous group of people you could not have hoped to know." The final radio transmission between Mission Control and the shuttle gave no indication of a catastrophic failure. Mission Control radioed: "Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last." Columbia's response: "Roger, uh ..." Then the transmission breaks off. Astronaut Charlie Hobaugh in mission control tried to call the shuttle on a separate radio without any luck and the shuttle was not tracked on radar. A television station in Dallas, Texas, shot video of the shuttle as it flew across the Texas skies, which showed the shuttle apparently breaking up. Debris was found in several eastern Texas cities including Palestine and Texarkana. There have been no reports of any injuries on the ground. Television footage showed a bright light followed by smoke plumes streaking diagonally through the sky. Debris appeared to break off into separate balls of light as it continued downward. NASA declared an emergency after losing contact with the crew and within minutes said search teams had been sent to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In Nacogdoches, Texas, residents found bits of metal strewn across the city. Dentist Jeff Hancock said a metal bracket about a foot long had crashed through his office roof. The shuttle flight was the 113th in the shuttle program's 22 years and the 28th flight for Columbia, NASA's oldest shuttle. In 42 years of US human space flight, there had never been an accident during the descent to Earth or landing. On January 28, 1986, however, space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. Two hours after the shuttle had been expected to land, the giant screen at the front of Mission Control showed a map of the Southwest United States and what should have been Columbia's flight path. The US flag next to the center's countdown clock was lowered to half-staff. "A contingency for the space shuttle has been declared," Mission Control somberly repeated over and over. In another room at Kennedy Space Center, O'Keefe met with the astronauts' families, who had been waiting at the landing site for the shuttle's return. Six of the seven astronauts were married, and five of them had children. Security had been extraordinarily tight for their 16-day scientific research mission because of the presence of Col. Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. Ramon, 48, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, had survived two wars. He became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's launch, but also for its planned landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target. A senior US official said no specific threats had been made against the shuttle and that it would have been out of range of a surface-to-air missile at the time. Dr. Yael Barr of the Israeli Aerospace Medicine Institute was waiting at the landing strip for the astronauts' return. "When the countdown clock, when it got to zero and then started going, instead of counting down, counting up and they were still not there, I told my friend, 'I have a bad feeling. I think they are gone.' And I was in tears," Barr said. Also on board was Indian-born Kalpana Chawla, 41, who became an astronaut in 1994. It was her second trip in space. Residents in the town of her birth, Karnal, about 135 kilometers north of New Delhi, had planned a celebration, but were in shock and mourning on Saturday night. Only two other crew members had flown in space before: the shuttle's commander, Rick Husband and Michael Anderson. The four others were rookies: pilot William McCool, and David Brown, Laurel Clark, and Ramon. NASA officials, meanwhile, warned people on the ground to stay away from any fallen shuttle debris. EPA spokesman Joe Martyak said he did not know what toxic chemicals could be amid the debris because the shuttle can undergo reactions from the intense heat of reentry. The shuttle is essentially a glider during the hour-long decent from orbit toward the landing strip. It is covered by about 20,000 thermal tiles to protect against temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees. The first indication of a potential problem occurred minutes before 9 a.m. when there was a loss of temperature sensors on left wing, said Ron Dittemore, the shuttle program manager. During Columbia's liftoff on January 16, a piece of insulating foam from the fuel tank was believed to have hit that wing. Leroy Cain, the lead flight director in Mission Control, assured reporters Friday that engineers had concluded that any damage to the wing was considered minor and posed no safety hazard. Dittemore said the loss of the sensors on the left wing was followed seconds later by several other problems, including a loss of tire pressure and indications of excessive structural heating. Columbia had completed 255 orbits on its 16-day science mission. Some of the scientific data were transmitted during the flight, including the first ever observation of a dust storm from space, with the MEIDEX camera operated by Ilan Ramon. The shuttle was at an altitude of about 203,000 feet (61 km.) over north-central Texas, traveling at 20,100 kph - or 18 times the speed of sound - when Mission Control lost all contact and tracking data. Gary Hunziker in Plano, Texas, said he saw the shuttle flying overhead. "I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it," he told The Associated Press. "I just assumed they were chase jets." "The barn started shaking and we ran out and started looking around," said Benjamin Laster of Kemp, Texas. "I saw a puff of vapor and smoke and saw big chunk of material fall." Just in the past week, NASA observed the anniversary of its only two other space tragedies, the Challenger explosion, which killed all seven astronauts on board, and the Apollo spacecraft fire that killed three on January 27, 1967. Former astronaut John Glenn and his wife were watching on television at their home in Maryland. "Anytime you lose contact like that, there's some big problem. Of course, once you went for several minutes without any contact, you knew something was terribly wrong," Glenn said.