What was the mission of the astronauts aboard Columbia?
According to NASA‘s official site about the Space Shuttle Columbia’s final, tragic flight, the sole mission of the astronauts was space research. This flight, known as STS-107 (short for Space Transportation System, 107th flight), carried over 80 experiments that used the unique microgravity conditions of orbit to investigate everything from the physics of fire suppression to growing protein crystals for use in medicine. Most people have heard of “zero-g,” but that doesn’t accurately describe the conditions on board a space shuttle. While orbiting the Earth, astronauts experience microgravity — one-millionth the pull of gravity here on the ground. It’s not quite zero-g, but it’s close. And this microgravity environment is unlike anything on Earth, so it’s a great place to perform many types of
