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.