'The world looks marvellous from here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile'

A mission that began so full of hope and ended in disaster

The seven crew members were in their bright orange pressure suits – they call them pumpkin suits at Nasa – and sealed helmets in the final seconds of their flight aboard the Columbia. But nothing on the spacecraft could have protected them when catastrophe struck in the clear skies over northern Texas.

Nor was there anything anyone could do at mission control, just a few hundred miles south in Houston. By the time the men and women at their flickering screens understood that they had lost contact with the shuttle at about 9am Eastern Time, all seven souls had surely already perished. There are no ejector seats on a space shuttle. And how would they have helped on a craft travelling at 12,500mph?

At that same moment, scores of witnesses on the ground, some of whom had walked out from their homes precisely to watch the normally thrilling spectacle of the shuttle sweeping across the open blue sky on its way to Nasa's Cape Canaveral centre in Florida, also understood the worst.

It was a while longer before the rest of America came to know that once again it was facing jarring tragedy. Families across the country gathered before televisions to watch video shots of the blue Texas sky bisected by a white vapour trail that suddenly began to smudge and flicker. The single trail became two and then three as the spacecraft apparently broke into different flaming pieces.

Though the craft was extremely high – about 200,000 feet – its disintegration came with a deep resounding boom that sent horses bolting and dogs barking at the heavens. "It was like a car hitting the house, or an explosion. It shook that much," said John Ferolito, 60, of Carrolton, north of Dallas.

Once again, America was contemplating the destruction of a symbol of its national pride. Memories leaped back to January 1986, when Nasa suffered the loss of the Challenger shuttle soon after lift-off from Cape Canaveral. And most of us recalled those news shots of that other blue-sky day that bled the country's heart more recently – the flattening of the twin towers in September 2001.

On Wednesday, crew members spoke to reporters about personal moments when the miracle of their mission meant most to them. Laurel Clark described watching flowers open in space in an experiment on the development of fragrances.

"There were roses in there, and they had been buds, and they had opened up to bloom," she said, "and it was so, so magical to have roses growing in our laboratory in space." Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space, marvelled at the wonder of the Earth below and of his life that 72 hours later would be extinguished. "The world looks marvellous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile," he said. "The atmosphere is so thin and fragile, and I think everybody, all of us ... have to keep it clean and good. It saves our life and gives our life."

It took Nasa about 15 minutes to make the loss public. By then, President George Bush, at his weekend retreat at Camp David, had been briefed and was hurrying back to the White House. On top of the certain shock of the space shuttle coming down was a layer of even more ominous dread: that maybe it hadn't been an accident. Could it be that terrorists had returned to America and shot it down?

The radio and television waves were at first crammed with speculation of this kind. Commentators noted that exceptional security had been put in place for the take-off, on 16 January, and landing of Columbia because of the terrorist threat and, more precisely, because of the presence of an Israeli astronaut. They wondered if a surface-to-air missile could have been fired.

Officials were swift to downplay such speculation as technologically impossible. That, at least, was merciful. This is trauma enough for a country that has suffered its fair share recently. An accident, at least, can be ascribed to human frailty and to God – not to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.

There were, as usual, scores of spectators surrounding the perimeter of Nasa's giant campus at Cape Canaveral, hoping for a glimpse of the bird as it tracked its final gliding path to the mammoth runway. Touchdown was set for 9.16am under perfect conditions. Hundreds of pairs of eyes strained to see its approach from the west. But the shuttle was not coming.

Among those waiting for the landing was a small group of people who were suddenly gathered together and taken away by Nasa officials. These men, women and children needed special help and special protection. They were the families of the seven members of the crew.

The Columbia crew

David Brown, 46, became an astronaut in 1996.

A navy captain, pilot and doctor, David Brown joined the navy after a medical internship and went on to fly the A-6E Intruder and F-18. Columbia's mission was his first spaceflight.

Commander Rick Husband, 45, became an astronaut in 1994.

The air force colonel from Amarillo, Texas, found his vocation as a child. "It's just a thrill to be able to get to actually live it out," he said in an interview before Columbia's launch.

Flight surgeon Laurel Clark, 41, became an astronaut in 1996.

A navy medical officer aboard submarines and the mother of an eight-year-old son, Ms Clark was from Racine, Wisconsin. On board Columbia she helped with science experiments.

Kalpana Chawla, 41, became an astronaut in 1994.

Ms Chawla emigrated to the US from India in the 1980s. On her only other spaceflight, she sent a science satellite tumbling out of control. Other astronauts had to go on spacewalk to capture it.

Michael Anderson, 43, was the shuttle's payload commander.

A former air force officer from Spokane, Washington, Mr Anderson was selected by Nasa in 1994. He was in charge of the many science experiments on Columbia.

Pilot William McCool, 41, became an astronaut in 1996.

A navy commander from Lubbock, Texas, the father of three graduated second in his 1983 class at the Naval Academy. This was his first spaceflight.

Ilan Ramon, 48, was an Israeli air force colonel and the first Israeli in space.

After serving as a fighter pilot, Ilan Ramon was chosen as Israel's first astronaut in 1997. He moved to Houston to train for the shuttle flight. His wife and four children live in Tel Aviv.