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Last words...

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington FEB. 2. Columbia had just entered the earth's atmosphere. Tragedy struck when the space shuttle was about 65 km above the earth and hurtling down at the speed of about 20,000 km an hour. ``Columbia, (this is) Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last...'', was the last message that went out from the Mission Control. The Commander of the Shuttle, Rick Husband, started his response clearly, but everything else is history. ``Roger, eh, buh.....'', was the last garbled message from Columbia, followed by silence. That was when Mission Control went about ``looking'' for the shuttle, some 16 minutes before it was due to touch down on one of the prepared runways in Florida.

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