Final moments of doomed shuttle crew

my name is Scott Altman I was the mission commander of Columbia's previous mission and I'm now part of the NASA team investigating the mishap the tape that follows is flight-deck audio and video that was recorded by the crew of Columbia as they prepared for their planned landing at the Kennedy Space Center flight deck audio and video is routinely recorded by crews during shuttle reentry and is used for post flight crew presentations and also as a debriefing and training tool the tape begins at approximately 7:35 a.m. central time 17 minutes after the shuttles deorbit burn completed with the shuttle at approximately 500,000 feet over the South Pacific it ends 13 minutes later at 7:48 a.m. Central time with the shuttle passing north east of Hawaii at an altitude of 250,000 feet the tape shows the crew is going through nominal entry preparations donning their gloves fluid loading and checking suit pressure integrity as well as documenting plasma effects and flashes observed outside the windows all of the plasma effects and flashes that are noted on the tape are typical to a normal shuttle night reentry the tape ends with the shuttle five minutes from crossing the coast of California four minutes prior to the first failure being observed on the ground and 10 minutes before the first failure message was enunciated to the crew on a nominal mission this tape would have recorded events all the way through landy however we believe the rest of this tape was destroyed during the mishap with only the initial 13 minutes wound on the take-up reel being recovered of over 250 nearly identical tapes flown on Columbia this is the only tape recovered to date that has any video recording

Channel: AP Archive

Views: 1,632,389

Rating: 4.4843621 out of 5

Keywords: AP Archive, 364739, 54e50a680c9e3638dd3ffae285d0ffb8, Columbia Video, Ilan Ramon, General news, Business

Id: TIHLoik2ObA

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2015