NASA marks Apollo, Challenger, Columbia tragedies on annual Day of Remembrance
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — It was a cloudy Saturday morning on the Space Coast when 12-year-old Tal Ramon anxiously waited with his family for the return of his father Ilan on Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.
Ilan and his six crewmates flying on STS-107 never made it home.
Now 22 years later, Tal was back in Florida, this time under gloomy skies and biting cold Thursday morning having just placed a wreath alongside other family members of fallen astronauts in front of the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
“It never really gets easier.” said Tal, now 34, after the ceremony that was part the NASA Day of Remembrance. “You’re always dealing with grief. It’s always part of your life.
“But what you do is you learn to live alongside of it, and to take it with you, and to be proud and to take your memory, your good memories, and make them what carries the rest of your future.”
His father was the first Israeli in space, but among the seven who died Feb. 1, 2003 aboard Columbia when the orbiter disintegrated upon re-entry during its 28th mission. He died alongside NASA astronauts Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Michael Anderson.
The ceremony paid homage to Columbia’s seven along with the seven who died on Space Shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986, the three Apollo 1 astronauts that died in a fire on the launch pad during a test Jan. 27, 1967 and eight others who paid the ultimate price in their pursuit of America’s space program.
All 25 names of the men and women were read aloud accompanied by the ringing of a bell by a member of the ceremony’s color guard ahead of the wreath-laying at the memorial.
That includes the Challenger’s crew of astronauts Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnick and Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher.
And it includes Apollo I’s Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee, the three astronauts who were set to launch on the first crewed mission of the Apollo lunar landing program.
The ceremony, attended by former NASA astronauts, current NASA leaders and surviving family of those being remembered, was one of several events around the nation held at NASA centers as well as Arlington National Ceremony in Washington.
The KSC ceremony was organized by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, which funded construction of the Space Mirror Memorial.
“I pray that we never have to add another name to the mirror, but the reality is that spaceflight is uncertain,” said former NASA astronaut Eileen Collins, who sits on the board of the foundation.
Also speaking during the ceremony, acting KSC Director Kelvin Manning said the mirror is a sobering reminder as he goes to work each day
“I drive past the Space Mirror Memorial, see the names and have the opportunity to reflect on the impacts of these tragic losses, the importance of the lessons learned and how these moments have defined eras to human spaceflight and have also permanently altered the culture of our agency,” Manning said.
He touted the progress NASA has seen in the years since Columbia’s tragedy and the agency’s future with plans under Artemis to return humans to the moon and venture onto Mars.
“For each of the audacious goals for which we aspire and each of the successes yet before us, we owe a debt of gratitude to the crews of Apollo I, Challenger and Columbia and to all the others who have lost their lives in the advancement of science and exploration.”
But he said all the successes NASA hopes to achieve will always be tinged with the somber reality of its lowest points.
“Looking out across the faces today, people I talked to this morning, I’m struck that each of us are tethered to the memories of these tragedies, personally, as family, friends, loved ones, professionally, as individuals who experience these mishaps firsthand.”
Tal Ramon then spoke about his father’s legacy and the efforts of his late mother and Ilan’s widow, Rona, through the Ramon Foundation she founded after his death.
“To this day, my father’s achievements continue to inspire us to always try to think for the bigger picture,” he said. “He understood, and he did that himself, and he understood that we are all part of something much greater than ourselves.”
The foundation worked with NASA to stoke space interest in the country’s youth through educational outreach, but also seeding the foundations of space startups in Israel.
“When children today hear the story of Israel’s first astronaut, they’re filled with pride and motivation, and that is proof that their memory isn’t just history. It’s alive and it’s in the next generation,” he said. “And this is also true for these heroes that we lost, all these wonderful heroes.”