STS-107

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mission emblem
Mission emblem STS-107
Mission dates
Mission: STS-107
COSPAR-ID : 2003-003A
Crew: 7th
Begin: January 16, 2003, 15:39:00  UTC
Starting place: Kennedy Space Center , LC-39A
Landing: February 1, 2003, 13:59 UTC (crashed)
Flight duration: 15d 22h 20min
Earth orbits: 255
Rotation time : 90.1 min
Orbit inclination : 39.0 °
Apogee : 285 km
Perigee : 270 km
Payload: Spacehab module
Team photo
Front: Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool; Back: David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon (each from left to right)
Front: Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool;
Back: David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon
(each from left to right)
◄ Before / After ►
STS-113 STS-114

STS-107 ( english S pace T ransportation S ystem ) is the mission designation for a flight of the US Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102) NASA . The launch took place on January 16, 2003. After a two-week flight, the ferry broke apart on February 1, 2003 when it re- entered the earth's atmosphere. All seven crew members were killed.

It was the 113th space shuttle mission - the only one in 2003 - and the 28th flight of the Columbia space shuttle.

team

The colors indicate the affiliation to the respective layer .

Mission overview

Around 80 scientific experiments were carried out on this mission. In addition to the Spacehab RDM (Research Double Module) laboratory, the Columbia's cargo hold also housed the FREESTAR experiment package, which was housed on a bridge structure.

On STS-107, Ilan Ramon , an Israeli astronaut, flew into space for the first time.

Preparations

This flight was the last shuttle mission entirely dedicated to scientific research before the International Space Station was supposed to take over this field of activity. Due to delays in the shuttle program, technical problems and changes in the payload, the Columbia flight was repeatedly postponed: When the Israeli spaceman Ilan Ramon was selected in 1997, the NASA manifesto recorded the start for May 2000. With the announcement of the commander and Pilot in December 2000, STS-107 had already slipped back a year (July 2001).

The order and the freight were also changed several times. So there were considerations at NASA headquarters to have the flight carried out by a crew that consisted exclusively of women. For a while, the Earth observation satellite Triana was planned as the payload . This Trabant, named after the lookout Rodrigo de Triana , who discovered America on Columbus' first voyage in 1492, was developed at the suggestion of former US Vice President Al Gore until Congress stopped the funds in 2001.

The Columbia space shuttle returned on March 12, 2002 from its last mission, STS-109 , a maintenance flight to the Hubble Space Telescope . At this point, the longest- serving orbiter was due to restart on STS-107 four months later. A few weeks later, this date, July 11th, was postponed by eight days in order to have more time for preparations.

On June 24, 2002, the planned July 19 launch of STS-107 was postponed again for "a few weeks" after hairline cracks between two and seven millimeters long had been discovered in the fuel lines of two orbiters . During routine inspections, technicians found the first crack on the Atlantis on June 17th, and then on the Discovery , which was being modernized. Thereupon investigations were ordered for the Columbia and the Endeavor, who had returned only a few days earlier from STS-111 . In addition, NASA imposed a launch ban on the shuttle fleet until the cause of the crack was found.

At the beginning of July three cracks were found in a Columbia pipeline, and a few days later two cracks at the Endeavor. A total of eleven hairline cracks were found in all space shuttles. At first it was unclear how they came about and whether they were dangerous.

On July 12th, Ron Dittemore, director of the shuttle program, announced that there would be no further launches until mid-September 2002. The problem of hairline cracks may have existed since the first start in April 1981 and it has only now been discovered. All further missions would be suspended until clarification, or at least until the engineers could ensure that the cracks would not get bigger and pose no danger. Two weeks later, on July 26th, Dittemore announced that it would be sufficient to weld all eleven cracks found. After detailed analyzes, engineers had determined that material fatigue, caused by the strong thermal and mechanical loads during start-up, was the cause and that a repair should be sufficient.

The Columbia on the way to the launch pad

It was then decided to bring forward the two remaining ISS flights in 2002 and to allow STS-107 to begin on November 29th at the earliest. But in late August 2002 NASA decided to reschedule the Columbia flight to January 2003 because STS-112 and STS-113 could not be completed as quickly as expected.

On November 18, the space shuttle was wheeled from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building . Two days later the assembly with the external tank and the two solid fuel rockets took place there. On December 9, 2002, the Columbia was driven to ramp 39A.

Mission history

begin

Start of Columbia
A piece of foam insulation from the outer tank

Because of the security regulations issued after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the exact time of the start on January 16, 2003 was not given. Only a four-hour window (15:00 to 19:00 UTC) was announced within which the launch would take place. These concealment measures concerned further stations of the preparations, from which the moment of the start could have been calculated, such as the arrival of the team in Florida, the start of the countdown, etc. The time of 15:39 UTC was announced only 24 hours before the planned start date.

In addition, there was also an increased alertness of the authorities responsible for security. Military units took up positions around the Kennedy Space Center - snipers were posted, military helicopters and interceptors patrolled, mobile rocket launchers moved in and restricted areas were expanded. NASA emphasized that these measures were part of the new security concept and had nothing to do with the fact that the first Israeli spaceman was part of the shuttle crew.

Until immediately before the start it was not clear whether the mission would be postponed again. In December 2002, technicians had diagnosed problems with a ball joint on the Discovery, which allows flexibility within the large fuel lines. A six centimeter metal ball showed cracks on the surface. NASA engineers discussed whether the Columbia, which was standing by the ramp, should be pulled back because an on-site inspection was not possible. The day before the start it was decided that a possibly defective ball joint would not pose a threat to the Columbia.

On January 16, 2003, in ideal weather, the Columbia left the launch pad punctually at 15:39:00 UTC. This was preceded by a countdown without any technical difficulties. In contrast to missions that fly to the International Space Station and only have a short launch window of around five minutes, this time you had more time. STS-107 had the maximum possible time span of two and a half hours. The start window was limited by the NASA guideline, which limits the time that team members can lie on their backs strapped in to 150 minutes for health reasons.

Two video images of the take-off: left before and right after the left wing was hit

One day later, the footage of the take-off was routinely viewed. The evaluation showed that around 81 seconds after leaving the ramp, a piece of the foam insulation had loosened from the outer tank and hit the left wing. However, NASA engineers assumed only minor damage to the heat shield, as it was not uncommon for parts to come loose from the external tank. Serious damage never occurred. The high-speed images also showed that the fragment left behind a cloud of particles after impact, which was interpreted as its destruction. Therefore, NASA decided to continue the mission normally.

Research around the clock

Scientific research was the focus of this shuttle flight. The disciplines ranged from physics, basic research, materials science, earth observation, biology and chemistry to medicine. A total of 79 different individual experiments by researchers from business and universities from the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel and Japan, as well as the US government, made up the payload.

The payload is hoisted into the Columbia's hold (from left: FREESTAR, Spacehab and Tunnel)

The majority of the 32 research packages were accommodated in a Spacehab module from the US company of the same name in the cargo hold of Columbia. The RDM (Research Double Module) unit was six meters long, four meters wide and three meters high. The module was connected to the crew cabin of the ferry via a tunnel so that the astronauts could reach their workplaces unhindered. The Spacehab offered 60 cubic meters of space and was equipped with 3.4 tons of scientific equipment, which was housed in side-mounted cabinets and drawers. NASA put the cost of the scientific equipment including the rent for the Spacehab at 78 million US dollars.

The seven-person crew worked in two shifts to make optimal use of the experiments. The groups took turns after twelve hours. The blue team was formed by pilot Willie McCool and mission specialists Mike Anderson and David Brown . Commander Rick Husband , the two mission specialists Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark and the payload expert Ilan Ramon made up the red team.

One of the most unusual experiments was about scents. International Flavors & Fragrances , one of the world's leading producers of fragrances and perfumes based in New York City , sent a rose with six buds and an Asian rice flower on its way. During the flight, the odor molecules were captured with a probe. Back on earth, these should be examined for their composition with mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs . Four years earlier, a rose had been on a space shuttle ( STS-95 ) on behalf of science .

The ESA has been involved with four of the 32 research projects, which were divided into 14 separate experiments. These included three contributions from Germany: Uwe Hoffmann from the German Sport University Cologne researched the "Influence of weightlessness on heartbeat and blood pressure" and Reinhard Miller from the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam-Golm investigated in the FAST module ( Facility for Adsorption and Surface Tension) Questions about surface tension . The German Aerospace Center also had a mini-aquarium in the middle deck with CEBAS (Closed Equilibrated Biological Aquatic System). The development of the embryos, the sexual behavior and the skeleton structure of four adult and twelve juvenile fish of the swordtail as well as the structure of the inner ear of 50 cichlid larvae were examined. CEBAS was developed by the Bremen company OHB-System , had a volume of 8.3 liters and was used for the third time after the STS-89 and STS-90 .

Israeli students prepare their experiment

Six experiments were projects by students from six countries in the STARS (Space Technology And Research Students) program of the Spacehab subsidiary Space Media: A Chinese experiment investigated how microgravity influences the development of the silk moth. There were also three pupae and five specimens of the butterfly on board. With eight orb web spiders , an Australian group investigated how the loss of gravity affects web construction. A Liechtenstein high school tested three wooden bees' behavior when building tunnels in space. Japanese students had prepared four rice fish eggs to determine whether fry develop faster in weightlessness than on earth. The Matzkin School in Israeli Haifa explored the growth of crystalline fibers and students in a US high school in Syracuse ( New York ) studied a small country of 15 harvester ants to changes in their social behavior.

One of NASA's own projects was communication via the Internet . Information was exchanged between the ground station and the space shuttle via Internet Protocol . For this purpose, a PC with a 233 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM was on board the Columbia. Red Hat Linux was installed as the operating system. A connection was established with the Goddard Space Flight Center via a satellite relay.

FREESTAR structure

There was also a bridge structure in the payload bay behind the Spacehab module. Six experiments were grouped on it under the name FREESTAR (Fast Reaction Experiments Enabling Science, Technology, Applications and Research): SEM-14 (Space Experiment Module), LPT (Low Power Transceiver), CVX-2 (Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2) , MEIDEX (MEditerranean Israeli Dust EXperiment), SOLCON-3 (SOLar CONstant experiment-3) and SOLSE-2 (Shuttle Ozone Limb Sounding Experiment).

Another research focus was on combustion theory . The behavior of flames in weightlessness was investigated in the Combustion Module. The SOFBALL experiment (Structures Of Flame Balls At Low Lewis-number) researched combustion processes that are only carried out with a small amount of combustible material. Gas mixtures with minimal saturation were ignited: hydrogen , the invisible flame of which could only be viewed through a special video system, and methane , which has a pale bluish color. The background to the experiment was the development of engines with better fuel economy and lower pollutant emissions as well as the improvement of fire protection. SOFBALL made its debut in 1997 on the MSL-1 mission (Microgravity Science Laboratory 1) with the flights STS-83 and STS-94 .

Working in orbit

The first few days went according to the flight plan. A few hours after reaching orbit, the astronauts floated into the Spacehab module and activated the experiments. On January 20, 2003, the fifth day of the mission, problems arose for the first time when the temperature in the Spacehab rose due to a regulator defect in the life support system. In the morning, the research module's air conditioning had to be switched off after condensation had leaked out, and around 19:15 UTC a short circuit also led to the replacement system failing. As a result, the room temperature in the module reached a peak value of 29 ° C (7 K above the normal value). In order to make the work more bearable for the astronauts and not have to switch off any experiments, air was provisionally led from the middle deck into the connecting tunnel. A day later the temperature had dropped back to 24 ° C.

View through the connecting tunnel into Spacehab

On the twelfth day of the flight, January 27, there was a friendly conversation when the crew of the shuttle made contact with the International Space Station (ISS) by radio. The Red Team under Commander Rick Husband had just started their shift when Ken Bowersox , the chief of the sixth permanent crew , reported at around 17:30 UTC. It was a satellite radio link because the two spaceships did not meet because of their different orbits. At the time of the brief conversation, the Columbia was over Brazil and the ISS was over the Ukraine. In addition to greetings and good wishes, Kalpana Chawla asked ISS flight engineer Don Pettit how his twin sons are doing.

One day later it was the 17th anniversary of the Challenger disaster . Just one minute after taking off on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle broke up and tore the seven-man crew to their deaths. Both on Earth and in space, the dead of the Challenger and the three Apollo 1 astronauts who died in a ground test were remembered .

A telescope in Hawaii took this picture of Columbia in space.

Three days before the planned landing, payload commander Mike Anderson drew a positive balance on the 14th day of flight, January 29th: The scientific yield was a complete success and many experiments had far exceeded expectations. And Ilan Ramon, Israel's first spaceman, said during the traditional press conference that he wished his country to be as calm and peaceful as it appeared from space.

On January 31, the astronauts prepared for the landing scheduled for the next day. The Spacehab was deactivated, the experiments and material samples stowed away and further preparations made for the return. At a press conference in the control center , Flight Director LeRoy Cain pointed out that the analysis of the footage from the start of the Columbia showed that a piece of the foam insulation had detached from the outer tank and hit the left wing. It is possible that some of the tiles on the heat shield were damaged. However, the engineers are not worried about this and the landing will be carried out as planned. As it turned out later, this was a misjudgment.

The catastrophe

The Columbia orbited the earth at an altitude of between 172 and 179 kilometers when the brake engines were fired for two and a half minutes on February 1 at 13:15 UTC to initiate the return. The weather conditions for a landing in Florida were good, apart from local fog fields and low clouds. At 14:15:50 UTC the space shuttle in the Kennedy Space Center was to touch down on runway 33 with the main landing gear.

Over the Pacific, the orbiter entered the denser layers of the atmosphere at 13:44 UTC at an altitude of 122 kilometers. Seven minutes later, the Columbia reached the west coast of the USA north of San Francisco . The ferry broke apart 16 minutes (13:59 UTC) before the scheduled landing at an altitude of 63.1 kilometers over Texas . After entering the denser atmosphere, signs of anomalies had accumulated in the telemetry data.

A US Air Force facility in New Mexico photographed the Columbia shortly before the crash. The lower side shows a disturbance of the air flow due to the deformed port wing.

As the later reconstruction of the accident revealed, the first indications of unusual behavior became apparent at 13:48 UTC when the load sensors in the left wing leading edge delivered abnormal values. 20 seconds later, the temperature rose sharply at this point. Hot gases with a temperature of around 1,800  ° C had penetrated the wing through the leading edge of the wing and destroyed its structure. The fallen during the start fragment of the tank insulation was made of carbon fiber reinforced carbon ( reinforced carbon-carbon : short RCC damaged existing wing leading edge).

The last radio contact with Columbia took place at 13:59 UTC. Shortly before, the Columbia had flown from New Mexico over the border with Texas. Jeff Kling, the engineer responsible for the mechanics of the space shuttle in flight control, informed flight director Cain that he was no longer receiving any pressure readings from either of the tires on the left main landing gear. Then at 13:59:23 UTC the telemetry connection was broken for the first time - the inspectors in Houston no longer received any data. A second later, liaison spokesman Charles Hobaugh told Shuttle Commander Rick Husband that the tire pressure was being monitored. This acknowledged with a "Roger" when the connection was broken at 13:59:32 UTC in the middle of the next word. The last fragments of data reached Houston half a minute later, before contact was finally broken and Columbia broke up over Texas. Some parts of Columbia burned up, others fell as a rain shower over the southern United States.

The Columbia was the second orbiter that NASA lost. The space shuttle Challenger had had an accident 17 years earlier, on January 28, 1986, when the STS-51-L mission was launched .

At first it wasn't clear what had happened. The first official statements from NASA only stated that contact with the space shuttle had been lost around 14:00 UTC. Even if a crash was not expressly mentioned, it was pointed out at the same time not to touch debris and to report the locations to the authorities.

Investigation of the crash

Composition of the debris of the Columbia

One day after the accident, NASA chief Sean O'Keefe convened an independent committee of inquiry. The so-called CAIB Commission (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) was supposed to clarify how the accident happened. US Navy Admiral Harold W. Gehman, who had retired from active service three years earlier and was most recently Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic of NATO, was appointed chairman .

Initially, various theories circulated within NASA as to what might have caused the disaster - a defect in the heat protection was just one of them: the autopilot that was piloting the space shuttle at the time could have failed. Another possibility was that due to the age of the Columbia, there was material fatigue and structural integrity was compromised. A fire caused by a cable fire, a collision with space debris or a terrorist attack were also considered.

The first indications indicated that the cause was to be found in the landing gear shaft because the rapid heat development seemed to originate from there. Ron Dittemore, the director of the shuttle program, stated for the first time two days after the accident that the heat protection system could possibly have been damaged elsewhere.

To find out the cause of the accident, the ruins of the Columbia were reassembled in a hangar in Cape Canaveral. In addition, the recordings of the foam piece were improved with the computer.

Less than seven months after the space shuttle crashed, the Commission of Inquiry closed the investigation, which cost over $ 20 million, and published its final report on August 26, 2003. In the report, the reason given was the piece of insulating foam from the outer tank that fell off during take-off. A hole punched in the leading edge of the left wing, through which extremely hot plasma entered upon reentry , which caused the space shuttle to break apart.

Hole in a model of the RCC panel

Later experiments confirmed this theory: After firing a 1 kg piece of insulating material at the correct angle at approx. 800 km / h at original RCC panels, it was found that the hole was at least 25 cm in diameter . Upon re-entry, hot plasma penetrated through this defect in RCC panel no. 8 at the leading edge of the left wing and spread within the wing structure. This weakened the wing structure lastingly, destroyed several sensors and parts of the hydraulic system, so that it failed. This led to a loss of control of the attitude control, the aerodynamic stability of the Columbia was lost and it broke under the enormous aerodynamic forces.

Almost half of the report also criticized mechanical errors and NASA management. In the report, the space agency was accused of having incorrectly assessed various warnings from engineers about the possible extent of the damage suffered during launch. The commission also revealed serious shortcomings in the communication between individual NASA agencies. For example, it was criticized that the PowerPoint presentations about possible problems with a shuttle flight did not mention important points.

Following this report, the space shuttle program was publicly discredited as out of date and vulnerable. On January 14, 2004, US President George W. Bush announced the new space program . Thereafter, the shuttle program should only be operated until 2011 in order to complete the construction of the International Space Station. This also resulted in savings for the shuttles.

Crew Impact Report

On December 30, 2008, the crew safety report during the Columbia crash was released. In this it was mentioned that the crew only had 40 seconds to react to the disaster. Since the space suits worn for landing were only added to the safety concept of the space shuttles at a later date (after the Challenger disaster), the crew had little opportunity to react. For example, one astronaut was not wearing a helmet, three were not wearing gloves, and none of them had their helmet visors down when the Columbia's pressure chamber decompressed. The technology had only a minor impact on the shuttle program, but the lessons learned from this crash would be incorporated into the planning of the safety concept and training for subsequent spacecraft.

Later results of experiments

On the mission, roundworms of the species Caenorhabditis elegans were sent into space to investigate their ability to survive in a nutrient medium. A number of containers with the roundworms were recovered from the wreckage of the space shuttle and surviving descendants of the worms could be detected even after several months.

Exactly five years after the Columbia crash, it became known that data from an experiment believed to be lost had been successfully restored and analyzed. In the scientific project CVX-2 (Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2), the phenomenon of structural viscosity was investigated. Most of the data was transmitted via telemetry during the flight, but some of it was stored on a 340 MB hard drive on board. An evaluation was only possible if all data were submitted. The hard drive could be recovered after the Columbia crashed, but it was badly damaged. An almost complete reconstruction was achieved through extensive treatment by the data recovery company Kroll Ontrack . An evaluation of the experiment could now be carried out. The CVX-2 research results were published in the April 2008 issue of the journal Physical Review E published.

literature

  • William H. Starbuck, Moshe Farjoun (Eds.): Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster . Blackwell, Malden 2005, ISBN 1-4051-3108-X .

Web links

Commons : STS-107  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NASA Managers Delay STS-107 Launch. In: nasa.gov. NASA , June 24, 2002, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  2. ^ Jim Banke: First Crack Found Within Columbia's Propulsion System Plumbing. In: space.com. January 1, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  3. ^ Space Shuttle Fleet set for Return to Flight Sept. 28. In: nasa.gov. NASA , August 2, 2002, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Shuttle Status Report. NASA , August 26, 2002; archived from the original on March 6, 2016 ; accessed on April 7, 2018 (English).
  5. ↑ Shuttle Status Report. NASA December 9, 2002; archived from the original on March 7, 2016 ; accessed on April 7, 2018 (English).
  6. ^ Mark Carreau: Security tight for Israeli astronaut. In: chron.com. Houston Chronicle , January 15, 2003, archived from the original on February 18, 2008 ; accessed on January 29, 2016 .
  7. ^ Jefferson Morris: NASA investigating fault as Columbia launch looms. In: AviationNow.com. Aviation Week, January 6, 2003, archived from the original on February 12, 2003 ; accessed on January 29, 2016 .
  8. ↑ STS-107 MCC Status Report # 01. In: spaceflight.nasa.gov. NASA , January 16, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Jim Banke: Would a Rose Aboard Shuttle Columbia Smell as Sweet? In: space.com. January 22, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  10. ↑ STARS Program - Learn About the Experiments. In: starsacademy.com. SPACEHAB, Inc., 2002, archived from the original on August 8, 2002 ; accessed on January 29, 2016 .
  11. ↑ FREESTAR on Shuttle Flight STS-107. In: eO Portal. ESA , accessed January 29, 2016 .
  12. ^ Paul D. Ronney: STS-107 CM-2 / SOFBALL science summary. In: carambola.usc.edu. University of Southern California , accessed January 29, 2016 .
  13. ↑ STS-107 MCC Status Report # 06. In: spaceflight.nasa.gov. NASA , January 20, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Jim Banke: Shuttle Crew Calls Station, Workers Recall Challenger Disaster. In: space.com. January 27, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  15. ↑ STS-107 MCC Status Report # 15. In: spaceflight.nasa.gov. NASA , January 29, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  16. ^ Jim Banke: Columbia's Marathon Mission Reaches for the Finish Line. In: space.com. January 31, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  17. ↑ STS-107 MCC Status Report # 19. In: spaceflight.nasa.gov. NASA , February 1, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  18. ^ NASA Statement on Loss of Communications with Columbia. In: spaceflight.nasa.gov. NASA , February 1, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  19. ↑ NASA announces Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board (The Gehman Board). NASA , February 2, 2003, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  20. ^ The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB): The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report . Ed .: NASA . Volume 1, August 2003, Chapter 3 - Accident Analysis, pp. 49-84 ( PDF file; 2.09 MB [accessed January 29, 2016]).
  21. ^ The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB): The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report . Ed .: NASA . Volume 1, August 2003, Report Synopsis, p. 12 ( PDF file; 1.14 MB [accessed January 29, 2016]).
  22. ^ The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB): The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report . Ed .: NASA . Volume 1, August 2003, Chapter 7 - The Accidentʼs Organizational Causes, p. 182 f. and 191 ( PDF file; 573 kB [accessed on January 29, 2016]).
  23. ↑ James Hartsfield: NASA Report Reviews Crew Safety Measures During Columbia Accident, Recommends Improvements. In: nasa.gov. NASA , December 30, 2008, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  24. ↑ Brandon Griggs, Rich Phillips: NASA faults equipment in Columbia shuttle disaster. In: cnn.com. CNN , December 30, 2008; archived from the original on November 11, 2017 ; accessed on January 29, 2016 .
  25. ↑ Christoph Seidler: Anniversary of the "Columbia" disaster: How roundworms survived the hell of fire. In: spiegel.de. Spiegel Online , January 30, 2013, accessed January 29, 2016 .
  26. ↑ Brian Bergstein: Restored hard drive from "Columbia": data from burned up space shuttle saved. In: netzeitung.de. Netzeitung , May 13, 2008, archived from the original on May 14, 2008 ; accessed on January 29, 2016 .
  27. ^ Robert F. Berg et al .: Shear thinning near the critical point of xenon . In: Physical Review E . Volume 77, No. 4 , 2008, doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevE.77.041116 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on July 8, 2007 .