Backgrounder: space shuttle "Columbia"

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 ◆ Backgrounder: space shuttle "Columbia"

The US space shuttle Columbia, NASA's oldest and heaviest spaceship, broke up over Texas earlier Saturday (Feb.1) with seven astronauts aboard perished as it returned to Earth from a 16-day mission.

Here is a look at the doomed space shuttle Columbia:

Columbia, built in 1981 at a cost of about one billion US dollars, made its maiden flight on April 12, 1981. It had been refurbished three times since its first flight.

Its last flight, which started on Jan. 16, 2003, was the 113th in the shuttle program's 22 years and the 28th flight for Columbia.

The cabin of the spaceship is 18 meters long and can carry a payload of 36 tons of material into orbit. It has three main engines and one huge liquid fuel tank equipped at the end of the shuttle. Besides, there is one solid-propellant rocket on each side of the tank, which contains several hundreds of tons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Under the power provided by the three liquid-propellant engines with the two solid-propellant rockets, the space shuttle Columbia, an aerospace vehicle, leaves Earth and its atmosphere.

According to NASA officials, a space shuttle can be used for 75-100 times. During the 42 years of space exploration history by manned aircraft, it is the first time that an accident happened while the shuttle returns to the Earth.

The seven astronauts on board Columbia include the 48-year-old Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut in history, two woman astronauts among the rest six US astronauts.

Columbia was originally scheduled to be launched into space in 2001, but the date of blast-off was postponed to Jan. 16, 2003 due to technical reasons and delayed preparation work. The longest-serving US spacecraft was expected to land at 1416 GMT at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral of Florida in the southeast of the United States.

Columbia's mission is to conduct experiments designed by students from six countries, including an experiment designed by a Chinese student.