NASA’s Day of Remembrance Falls 2 Decades Since Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — It has been nearly 20 years since the seven crew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia didn’t make it home, and NASA leaders will gather today at Kennedy Space Center, Washington D.C. and other locations to commemorate their lives as well as those from Space Shuttle Challenger and Apollo 1 on the Day of Remembrance.

The somber annual event ties together the three fatal incidents as well as remembering others who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration.

The anniversaries of Apollo, Challenger and Columbia fall within six days of each other.

The Apollo 1 fire that killed Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee during a launch pad test at what was then Cape Kennedy Air Force Station happened in the early evening of Friday, Jan. 27, 1967. The three astronauts who were set to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo lunar landing program were testing ahead of their planned February launch when fire broke out at 6:31 p.m. during a simulation on Launch Complex 34.

NASA’s next major blow came 19 years and one day later, just before noon on Tuesday Jan. 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Central Florida after an O-ring seal failed. People all over the country viewed the disaster live because the shuttle was carrying Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space. Also killed were astronauts Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and Judith Resnick.

Then 17 years and three days later tragedy struck again, when in the morning hours of Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry on the shuttle’s 28th mission killing the seven-member crew of STS-107 — Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.

56 years ago, 37 years ago and 20 years ago.

Among several events around the nation will be a ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex held at the Space Mirror Memorial with Astronauts Memorial Foundation president and state Rep. Thad Altman as well as Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro and NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana.

The ceremony will livestream at 10 a.m. on the space center’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will be in Washington to lead a ceremony that includes a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier while other ceremonies will be held at Johnson Space Center in Houston and 10 other NASA facilities across the nation.

Nelson led a panel discussion earlier this week with Cabana and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy in Washington. Both Cabana and Melroy were at KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility awaiting Columbia’s return that morning two decades ago.

“I was out at the runway with Bob Cabana and the crew didn’t land on time,” Melroy said. “We all stared out looking as we did for the shuttle, listening for the sound of the distinctive double boom. And we didn’t hear it and the time came and went.

“Now, as a person trained in physics I understood perfectly well that this just can’t happen. When you come back at those speeds from space. You’re going to land when they say you’re going to land within a second. And that’s just how it is. But I couldn’t fathom it. I just simply couldn’t fathom it ...

“As we all looked at each other, Bob knew. Cabana knew before the rest of us and it’s because he’d been through it with Challenger. He was the first to say to all of us, they’re not coming home.”

NASA’s leaders hope to keep the tragedies and lessons learned in the minds not just on one day, or one week, but throughout the year.

“We can prevent accidents with people flying in space. That’s why our Day of Remembrance is so important,” Cabana said.

Cabana was assigned as the director of Flight Crew Operations in Houston, and STS 107 was his first flight in that role.

“I rode out to the pad with that crew and that’s the last time I saw them,” he said. “I knew the Challenger crew, but I really knew the Columbia crew and I knew that it was preventable. I knew we could have done something in retrospect when we learned about it. And it’s very hard. I was someone that had to tell families they weren’t coming home. I don’t ever want to have to do that again.”

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