Cnn newsroom. Hi, everyone. Im jessica dean in need work and we have breaking news out of Northern Gaza tonight where israel is preparing to reopen the erez Border Crossing and agreed to use its Port Of Ashdod to get humanitarian aid into gaza. This as the un humanitarian aid chief calling that situation in gaza, quote, of betrayal of humanity. It is now just hours before the israelhamas war reaches its six month mark with more than 33,000 People Killed this week. A deadly israeli strike killed seven humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen, cnns Nic Robertson is in jerusalem and nic israel is letting these aid trucks in what its going to be hard for them to actually get to civilians, walk us through all of this so what we know about the Border Crossing is that the israeli, israeli officials are saying they are expecting trucks, aid trucks have yet to cross over and arrows. Its not clear how many trucks is not clear what therell be carrying. In fact, very few details at the
-my wife, laurel, was on the shuttle. she was a scientist primarily involved with life sciences. one day during the mission, i was reviewing the notes, and then here s this foam issue. during launch, a large piece of foam had come off the external tank and impacted the left wing. me and my colleague had this discussion of, hey, you can use a family conference to talk to laurel and find out what she knew. -oh! -you got to remember the hat you re wearing is your flight-surgeon hat, not your family hat. it would have broken protocol for me to bring up an issue to a crew member, even though it s my wife. -i remember a certain sense of relief like, it s almost over. she s almost back. -i didn t talk to laurel about the foam issue. that conference was for iain and laurel, and i was a bystander. -i knew she was going to come back. you know, i never had a question in my mind. -given the fact that you may have lost a little bit of tile during lift-off, i m wondering
from space shuttle columbia as columbia continues to orbit the earth at an altitude of about 150 statute miles. columbia, houston, laurel, you re loud and clear on air to ground one. -the second day, i drive in to work kind of euphoric because another launch, another successful launch. you know, the flight director s office and the mission control center in houston is working with them. they re everything s good. i walked into the analysis lab to start reviewing film from the launch. we started the film at the beginning. [ rockets roaring ] we re watching this liftoff. you see the roll maneuvers, beautiful blue sky. we do the normal review, and we start pointing out all the things that we normally see. and we got to 81 seconds, and then we see this object come off of the external tank area. it moved down, and then striked the vehicle and explode into a white cloud. my reaction was, oh, shit. - you ll always find me sunny side up you ll always find me sunny side
-for the second time in nasa s history, a space shuttle has been lost along with its entire crew. once again, we are asking ourselves, how could this have happened? -do you have any idea how big that piece of foam was that came off? -we d heard some reports that during launch there had been some concerns that some debris hit the wing. is that true and is that any cause of concern and that could have caused today s problems? -it is true. it was judged that, erm , that event did not represent a safety concern. -this happened under my watch, but i didn t have the answers. in every public forum i m gonna have to be in, how am i gonna explain this to anybody? at this time, we have no indication that the mishap was caused by anything or anyone on the ground. -nasa never wants to look stupid. nasa wants to be the agency with the answers. -my thoughts are on what we missed, what i missed to allow this to happen. -but if you overlook something, it will come to bite you one day or anot
-columbia, this is cnn. how do you read me? -hey, cnn. we ve got you loud and clear. -stand by, and we ll have you on the tele here very shortly. say hello to the crew of the space shuttle columbia, now traveling above the pacific at 17,300 miles an hour, 150 miles above us, waving to us. let s give you an idea of who s who. i remember interviewing the crew in space. rick husband, the commander, second mission. laurel clark. prepping for that interview, i thought about the foam strike and how to handle it. but on launch day, when i saw that.footage, i wasn t sure what to think about it. i m not a rocket scientist, so i called to somebody who i know knew very well at nasa. i said, help me understand how worried i should be for this. and he said, oh, it s foam. it s very light material. probably doesn t cause any damage.