On Thursday, Jan. 26, team members at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, together with space agency personnel nationwide, will gather to honor the courageous men and women who lost their lives in pursuit of scientific knowledge and human exploration of the cosmos. Members of the Huntsville-area media are invited.
The commemorative event will be held at 9 a.m. in the lobby of Building 4221, and will include a candle-lighting and remarks by Marshall Director Jody Singer; Mike Hopkins, commander of the second crewed flight of NASA’s SpaceX Crew Dragon in 2021; and Bill Hill, director of Marshall’s Safety & Mission Assurance Directorate.
“NASA’s Day of Remembrance reflects not just those lost in pursuit of the stars – but all those who carry on the mission of human space exploration in their memory,” Singer said. “We continue to expand the frontiers of science and discovery to honor the men and women of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia.”
Those remembered include:
-Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White Jr., and Roger Chaffee, lost during launch testing on Jan. 27, 1967;
-Space shuttle Challenger astronauts Francis "Dick" Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, -Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe, lost on takeoff on Jan. 28, 1986; and
-Space shuttle Columbia astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon, lost during post-mission reentry 20 years ago, on Feb. 1, 2003.
A complete list of NASA’s Day of Remembrance events nationwide is available here:
https://www.nasa.gov/specials/dor2023
To attend the Marshall event, members of the media should contact Janet Sudnik at [email protected] or 256-544-0034 by 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25. Media participants should plan to arrive at Gate 9 of the Redstone Arsenal Joint Visitor Control Center at the Interstate 565 interchange of Rideout Road and Research Park Boulevard no later than 8 a.m. for badging.
