We are talking about year 2003 when space shuttle Columbia was on his 28th space mission when at the time of re-entry a disaster happened and this space shuttle fired up It had 7 astronauts in which one was from india her name was kalpana chawla and because of this disaster she died. So today we are talking about it how it happened and which things caused this incident. 

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Before this incident one disater also happened with space shuttle challenger in 1986 in which 7 astronauts died but after that experience nasa improved themselves and learned alot of new things but in 2003 space shuttle Columbia which was their 28th mission and because of a small negligence one more time this happened which caused 7 astronauts life and to understand the whole thing we have to understand few basic things first we have to understand the space shuttle need rocket to reach space which has alot of fuel inside it and it can be in liquid form or pre mixed hard form (fuel+oxidizer) but when they use liquid fuel they use separate liquid oxidizer tank which they secured with insulation foam because they have to maintain the low temperature otherwise it will change it's form so maintain it's form they insulate the tank internally and externally and they also add extra insulation where space shuttle attach to rocket with biopad ramp and the biggest enemy of this space shuttle is heat which can go up to 3000 degree and the material they use to make space shuttle is aluminum & Matel and also to protect from heat they use extra coating In which they use white tiles to protect upper side of plane which face up to 1200 degree heat and at the bottom they use black tiles which protect it from up to 2300 degree heat and the part which takes the most heat is space shuttle plane wings and they protect it with reinforce carbon carbon panel which protect it from up to 3000 degree heat. 

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But when they were launching space shuttle Columbia at that time biopad ramp broken down and hit the plane wing and no one thought that it can damage the wing because it was just a piece of foam so everybody neglect the fact that when it will come to re-enter stage it won't handle the pressure which will allow the heat to enter in the plane and the same thing happened The MMTS of NASA saw the biopad ramp broken but he didn't think to inform this to plane crew because he thought a foam can't do anything to this plane He thought if anything serious they will fix it in the space but when space shuttle re-entering the earth and the place where bipod ramp hitted exactly from there heat was damaging the space shuttle by fire and if we talk about crew member of space shuttle that did they had any chance to protect them? See when plane was re-entering at that time they were not wearing their space suit (even if they were wearing it they won't survive anyway) because of it they had only 10 seconds to wear it and no one can wear it in 10 seconds because of it when pressure came inside the plane they were out of oxygen and within 10 seconds they were unconscious and after that all the things happened to them what ever happens in space their body temperature rise and their body liquid started boiling and they died and after that all you saw in news how plane derbies where coming to ground for sometime no one know the exact cause of this disaster and everyone was thinking something happened while re-entering.

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But when NASA started their investigation then they found biopad ramp was the cause of this accident because for one month they were hitting the same type of foam on the plane wing and they found it actually broken at least 700 heat protective tiles from the wing though this foam was not that strong which broken the strong tiles of plane but it hit the plane wing at 500 km/hr which broken the plane wing tiles exactly like when bird hit the plane so same thing happened with this plane by biopad ramp so friend this is how whole space shuttle Columbia incident happened in which we lost 7 astronauts.