Space Shuttle Columbia disaster Space Shuttle Columbia disaster On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disintegrated upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. The disaster was the second fatal accident in the Space Shuttle program after Space Shuttle "Challenger", which broke apart and killed the seven-member crew 73 seconds after liftoff in 1986. During the launch of STS-107, "Columbia"'s 28th mission, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the left wing of the orbiter. A few previous shuttle launches had seen damage ranging from minor to nearly catastrophic from foam shedding, but some
Space tourism fly on Soyuz TMA-14 in March 2009. British-American Richard Garriott became the next space tourist in October 2008 aboard Soyuz TMA-14. As of 2018, Canadian Guy Laliberté is the most recent tourism to fly to the ISS, in September 2009 aboard Soyuz TMA-16. Since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, Soyuz once again became the only means of accessing the ISS, and so tourism was once again put on hold. Bigelow Aerospace acquired the designs for inflatable space habitats from NASA's Transhab program, and has already launched two first inflatable habitat modules. The first, named Genesis I, was launched