by Chris Tobias

Since the earliest days of this site, I have written annually about a very somber week in the space community.  That week begins today, with the anniversary of the flash fire that occurred on the launch pad during an Apollo 1 test 51 years ago, killing astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.  Tomorrow will mark the 32nd anniversary of the mid-launch explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which claimed the lives of astronauts Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Francis (Dick) Scobee, Ronald McNair, Mike Smith and Ellison Onizuka.  Just four days later, on February 1, we will see the 25th anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated during re-entry with the loss of astronauts David Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon.

Over the years I have written so much about these men and women, their bravery, their sacrifice and their willingness to give their lives if it meant that humanity would come one step closer to a future in which living and working out in the black was a regular part of our daily existence.  (If you’d like to read any of it, simply search this site’s archives for any given year in the months of January and February.)  As this week of remembrance approached again this year, I realized that I really didn’t have anything new to say that hadn’t already been said about them.  I felt that at this point, if there is any one thing that bears repeating, it is that they should be remembered as heroes.  Big.  Damn.  Heroes.  Every one of them.

So this year, I would simply like to call your attention to how NASA has decided to honor these astronauts, the crew of Challenger in particular.

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