"February 1, 2003 started on a bright note for the crew of STS-107 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. They were awakened by a rousing rendition of Scotland the Brave in honor of mission specialist Laurel Clark’s Scottish heritage. Mission Control followed the wake-up tune with news the astronauts had been waiting for. It was time to come home.
The seven members of the crew (commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, David Brown and Israeli payload specialist Ilan Ramon) were coming to the end of a 16 day mission of scientific experimentation, the first shuttle mission in two years that did not visit the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope.
As Columbia was making final preparations for landing, their families were journeying to Kennedy Space Center to watch their loved ones’ homecoming. Columbia and her crew were scheduled to land at Space Center at 9:16 a.m. There was much excitement in both places. Meanwhile, throughout the country and around the world, not only were most people ignorant of the identities of the astronauts, many were unaware there was even a shuttle mission taking place. All of this would change very soon."
The whole article detailing what happened can be read here:http://space.about.com/cs/spaceshuttles/a/columbialoss.htm
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