The brief film clip shows the craft, through its cockpit windows, being buffeted by flashes of intense orange light as super-hot gases encased Columbia in a fireball as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere almost a year ago.

Like children at a Fourth of July fireworks show, the astronauts joked for the camera about the fireball and sipped drinks as they prepared to land in Florida.

"Looks like a blast furnace," commander Rick Husband comments.

"You definitely don't want to be outside now," he says, and his six crewmates laugh.

The images show the astronauts looking forward to their return to Earth, clad in their orange spacesuits, glass helmet visors raised as they enjoy the flight.

Three crew members, Americans Mike Anderson and Dave Brown, and Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space, are seated on a lower deck and are not seen in the film, which was shot from the cockpit.

The tape ends four minutes before a rupture in radio communication signaled trouble to NASA controllers in Houston, Texas.

Unbeknownst to the astronauts, a hole in the shuttle's protective skin would shortly cause the craft to overheat, spin out of control and disintegrate into flaming particles of metal that showered down on parts of Texas and Louisiana.

All seven crew members were killed.

The 13 minutes of tape shows the crew going through routine checks as they flew over the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 152 kilometers, southwest of San Francisco.

The film cassette was found by searchers near Palestine, Texas, during the operation to retrieve debris scattered by the shuttle after it disintegrated over the state.

SPACE.WIRE