Its next two years were spent undergoing modifications while the Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis spacecraft conducted missions and research. Columbia made its return to space January 12, 1986, for a six-day mission that intended to photograph Halley’s Comet from space with a 35mm camera, but issues with the camera’s batteries doomed the project. However, the crew moved forward with their other planned experiments, including creating the first space-grown protein crystals. The crystals’ purity turned out to be far superior to proteins on Earth, which allowed researchers to get a clearer, more in-depth look at their structure. The mission also carried out numerous experiments on the human body’s reaction to microgravity, including the Initial Blood Storage Experiment, which showed that blood platelets stored at microgravity retain more structural and functional integrity than those stored on Earth.
Unfortunately, the following mission in NASA’s Space Shuttle Program ended in tragedy. On January 28, 1986, structural malfunctions and cold temperatures at the Kennedy Space Center caused the Challenger space shuttle to explode only 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crewmembers. The catastrophic event prompted NASA to suspend all space shuttle flights until September 1988.
Columbia returned to flight August 8, 1989, and proceeded to spend over a decade conducting space-based scientific research. Although the International Space Station was being constructed at the time, the Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavor spacecraft were responsible for its assembly, and Columbia never made a trip to the station. The shuttle used Spacelab to host missions devoted to studying how humans, animals, and cells react to microgravity and how they acclimate to Earth’s gravity when they return to the ground. These experiments studied how the heart, muscles, bones, and various organs respond to periods in space, giving NASA the data needed to ensure astronauts’ health and wellbeing.
The craft also carried out technical missions, including the Robotics Experiment (ROTEX) in 1993, where a robotic arm, remotely controlled from Earth, successfully captured roaming space objects. Columbia also performed maintenance and repairs on satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope. On a repair mission in March 2002, crewmembers replaced Hubble’s Power Control Unit and solar array panels, installed the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and installed a cooling system for its Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer.
On January 16, 2003, Columbia set off on its 28th mission, STS-107. Some of the many studies scheduled for the mission included microgravity experiments, exploring different ways of encapsulating anti-cancer drugs, and testing a water recycling device before its installation on the International Space Station.
Unfortunately, complications during launch sealed its tragic fate. About 80 seconds after the shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center, a suitcase-sized piece of foam insulation split off from the bipod ramp, which attached the external tank to the shuttle. The foam hit the shuttle’s left wing as it fell, and ground workers weren’t able to see the exact location or extent of the damage. NASA engineers concluded that if severe damage had occurred, the crewmembers wouldn’t be able to repair the shuttle while it was in orbit.