On February 1, 20 years ago, the oldest of the shuttles exploded just minutes away from landing, after a 16-day mission;
all the astronauts on board died, in a tragedy that left its mark on the space age.
In 1981 Columbia had been the first of the shuttles designed to assert the United States' first place in space, and in 2003 the 'old lady', as some called it, was still in the game.
In that last mission, Sts 107, experiments were conducted in microgravity conditions and only a few days before returning to Earth, it sent an SOS for the climate, with the first data showing how the fires in the tropical forests were gradually influencing the climate.
In those same days the seven astronauts from Columbia had remembered the seven colleagues from the Challenger, the shuttle that 17 years earlier, on January 28, 1986, had disintegrated 73 seconds after launch.
In NASA's intentions, the Space Shuttle should have worked at a rapid pace, but then the costs and the two dramatic accidents had significantly slowed down the initially planned timetable.
When the last shuttle, the Atlantis, left Cape Canaveral on July 8, 2011, an era ended and a future was already in the making.
Private companies came forward with their prototypes after the Obama administration closed NASA's Constellation program for budget reasons, which aimed at missions to complete the International Space Station, return to the Moon and bring astronauts to Mars.
For nine years, American astronauts flew on the Russian Soyuz shuttles and only in November 2020 did the Crew Dragon shuttle and the Falcon 9 rocket, both from SpaceX, return to the United States the ability to carry astronauts into space.
