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February 3 2003: Seventeen years after the Challenger, the US space shuttle programme has suffered its second major disaster when the Columbia disintegrated on its re-entry to Earth. Here are the best online reads.
Special report: space shuttle Columbia
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A town mourns the hero few knew
Bobbie Anderson, the father of astronaut Michael Anderson, did not go to church on Sunday. He did not open his Bible and he did not smile. He tells the New York Times his son has 'gone onto a better place to do better things'. Others in Spokane, Anderson's blue-collar home town, wonder why they did not know of the astronaut until his death.
New York Times
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Kalpana had thought of death in crash
Kalpana Chawla, the Indian-born US astronaut on the Columbia, had told her brother that if she had to die she hoped it would be in a crash. Already well known in the land of her birth, the Times of India profiles the woman who 'in death more than in life [...] is finding fame and recognition in the United States'.
Times of India
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Friends Remember Rick Husband
Fox 14 visits the Columbia captain's high school and speaks to former classmates. One, Susan Esler, remembers a teenager with a 'sweet spirit'. She explains: 'You just knew his heart was good and he always was going after his goal, he was always going to be an astronaut.'
Fox 14
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A tragedy beyond translation
'How were Americans to comprehend a language, an entire culture, a sweepingly tragic historical tradition, in which the word for space, "hallal", can also mean a slain individual, and an immense, crushing emptiness?' asks the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. For many Israelis, the cruelty of the tragedy - which claimed the life of Ilan Ramon, the country's first astronaut - slammed home with a force that seemed even more overwhelming than 'the tides of terrorism that had set cities aflame and claimed hundreds of deaths' over 28 months, it adds.
Ha'aretz
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Last message home
WCCO.com publishes an email Laurel Clark sent to her family the day before the Columbia was due to touch down. 'Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth,' she writes. 'The perspective is truly awe-inspiring.'
WCCO.com
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Columbia 'tough to launch, easy to fly'
Columbia was long considered a somewhat odd spacecraft by many of its crews, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Pilots liked it because it performed very well in orbit, but it sometimes took extra efforts to get it there.
Columbia Q&A - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Was the Columbia too old?
Budget cuts have seen Nasa attempt to extend the life of its shuttle fleet for another 25 years, says the Philadelphia Daily News, but the craft were considered 'aging, unwieldy space trailers' by some experts before Saturday's disaster.
Philadelphia Daily News
Columbia: Lost but not forgotten - Avion Online
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Could Columbia have been saved 'Armageddon'-style?
The Hindustan Times assesses the likely success of a spectacular rescue mission to save the Columbia before it came out of orbit. But concludes that there was little that would have worked.
Hindustan Times
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Bids for Columbia items flood eBay
'To no cynic's surprise, the internet's leading auction website was fast replete with shuttle materials', reports the Houston Chronicle. But alongside the T-shirts, commemorative medals, patches and launch photographs it is alleged that actual pieces of the Columbia were being sold as souvenirs shortly after they fell from the sky.
Reaction on the net - Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
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Difficult week ahead for president
President Bush enters one of the most difficult weeks of his presidency, says the Kansas City Star, leading the mourning over the space shuttle Columbia while bracing Americans for war. He also has to defend a budget proposal that promises record deficits.
Kansas City Star
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Region reacts to Columbia disaster
Iraqis expressed regrets, reports Lebanon's Daily Star, but thanked 'God Almighty' that the dead astronauts included an Israeli who was a fighter pilot in the 1981 air raid that destroyed their country's embryonic nuclear reactor. Meanwhile, Arab leaders offer condolences and Iran expresses regret for the death of the six US astronauts - saying politics should not get in the way of scientific and humanitarian issues - but makes no mention of the Israeli.
Daily Star
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Columbia carried local seeds
A junior school teacher in York County, Pennsylvania, tells the York Daily Record it will be difficult explaining to her pupils that the tomato seeds they had put on the Columbia, and were going to grow on its return in an experiment in their school garden, were destroyed. 'They're very young to handle this,' says Kathy Rohr.
York Daily Record
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