NASA and the families of the crews of the space shuttle missions STS-51L and STS-107 collaborated to create "Forever Remembered," a 2,000-square-foot memorial. The memorial, which opened on Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, contains the largest collection of recovered hardware as well as personal items from the crews of both the Challenger and Columbia, according to WKMG-Orlando.
"The crews of Challenger and Columbia are forever a part of a story that is ongoing," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, according to a press release. "It is the story of humankind's evolving journey into space, the unknown and the outer-reaches of knowledge, discovery and possibility. It is a story of hope."
Temperatures at Kennedy Space Center were just a few degrees above freezing on the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, as Challenger lifted off on its 10th mission, STS-51L. One minute and 13 seconds into the flight, a booster failure caused an explosion that destroyed the vehicle, resulting in the loss of the crew of seven astronauts: Commander Francis Scobee, Pilot Michael Smith, Mission Specialists Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka and Ronald McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher.
Seventeen years later, on Jan. 16, 2003, NASA's flagship orbiter Columbia thundered into orbit on STS-107, a 16-day science mission. On board were Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, Payload Commander Michael Anderson, Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark, and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut. On Feb. 1, 2003, the orbiter broke apart in the skies above east Texas as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere on the way to a planned landing at Kennedy. Seven more lives were lost.
"Forever Remembered" is designed to be an emotional experience, according to NASA's Mike Ciannilli, who has been NASA's lead on the memorial project since it began about four years ago."Emotion is timeless," Ciannilli said, according to the press release. "It's important that we don't lock this experience into a certain time, a certain place."
"I knew it would be very emotional to see, but honestly, I didn't expect to be so impacted by it. I just can't stop thinking about it. As you walk in, you know you're in a special place," Evelyn Husband Thompson said of the memorial. Her husband, Rick, commanded Columbia on STS-107.
"It's about the vehicles, the crews and the NASA family that made it all possible. We're not going to forget the lessons that we learned," Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana told CBS News. "We're not going to forget the crews or the people who made it possible. . . . This is an important part of that story that needs to be shared."
"The artifacts here on display are not easy to look at. Many of them are on display for the very first time," Bolden said, according to the press release. "It is our hope that by making them available for the public to view, we will help remind the world, that every launch, every discovery, every measure of progress, is possible only because of the sacrifice of those we have lost."
Among McAuliffe's artifacts is a quote: "I touch the future. I teach."
