Illustration of the Space Shuttle Columbia breaking-up on re-entry to the Earths atmosphere on 1st February 2003, killing its seven astronauts. The disaster was caused by the failure of the heat shield. Columbia, on mission STS-107, was at an altitude of around 65 kilometres and was travelling at 20,000 kilometres per hour. Debris from the explosion was scattered over a wide area of the southern USA. STS-107 launched on 16th January 2003 to carry out scientific experiments. On board were astronauts Husband, McCool, Ramon, Anderson, Clark, Chawla and Brown.