On 23 July 1999, just months before I started university, NASA’s space shuttle Columbia launched with precious cargo on board. Not only was it carrying the first crew to be led by a woman, Eileen Collins, but its primary goal was to launch a new flagship space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Chandra was the heaviest payload that NASA’s space shuttles ever carried, and it turned out to be one of the last two completed missions by Columbia before it tragically exploded after launch on 1 February 2003.
