At 7:59 a.m., on the morning of February 1st, 2003, first came the sounds, and then after the news reports and the scattered debris, the realization that East Texas had been engraved in history as one of the sites of the worst disasters in NASA’s history.

It was the "113th Space Shuttle Launch", scrapped 18 times in a two year period, finally getting the green light on January 16, 2003.

Hard to fathom that with all the technological advances of modern engineering that were prevalent ten years ago, it was a piece of thermal insulation foam not bigger than a suitcase, that brought down the ship upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003.

For those living in East Texas at the time, you know that most of the pieces resulting from its disintegration fell over our region, creating a hugh debris field that ended up somewhere near Central Louisiana.

Following the Columbia disaster, the Space Shuttle program was suspended for a little over two tears.

Here's the "take-off" roll.  Don't know if you can readily see the thermal insulation foam strike the vehicle 82 seconds after launch (about 1:32 of the video):

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