Space Shuttle Columbia Astronaut Injuries

More about the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, and causes of death...

Returning to Earth aboard Columbia were commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, David Brown and Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut. Exposure to high altitude and blunt trauma caused their deaths, the report states.
One of Columbia's STS-107 crew members was not wearing a pressure suit helmet and three astronauts had not put on their spacesuit gloves, according to the report. At no point did crew error contribute to the loss of Columbia, which was not a survivable event, the report states.
The design of Columbia's seats, too, decreased the crew's chances of survival as their restraints did not lock in place, subjecting the astronauts to extreme trauma from rotational forces. Their helmets were not head-conforming, resulting in injuries and lethal trauma, the report states.

And more about the equipment...

The report found five separate lethal events that occurred during Columbia's descent. It calls for enhanced astronaut training to help spacecraft crews transition from emergency response to survival mode. It also recommends that NASA design the seats and pressure suits for future spacecraft with loss of vehicle control in mind.
Current astronaut pressure suits, for example, require astronauts to manually deploy their parachute during an emergency escape. Modifying the system to automatically close visors or deploy a parachute could help an unconscious astronaut's chances if they survived a spacecraft's catastrophic descent.

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