CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA Television will provide live coverage of the Astronauts Memorial Foundation’s remembrance service honoring space shuttle Columbia’s STS-107 crew. The ceremony will be held at the Space Mirror Memorial on the NASA Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at 10 a.m. EST on Feb. 1, the fifth anniversary of the Columbia accident.
Speakers at the memorial include: NASA Administrator Michael Griffin; Evelyn Husband-Thompson, widow of Colonel Rick Husband; Kennedy Space Center Director Bill Parsons; NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations William Gerstenmaier; Shuttle Commander for the Return to Flight mission, STS-114, Eileen Collins; Shuttle Commander and former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations William Readdy and G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. Astronauts Memorial Foundation President Stephen Feldman will lead the service.
Media interested in covering the memorial should contact Andrea Farmer at 321-449-4318 or Jillian McRae at 321-449-4273.
The public also is invited to attend the service. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex will provide flowers for all ceremony guests and visitors throughout the day to place at the memorial. For more information, visit:
http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com
Columbia’s seven astronauts were lost during re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, following a 16-day science mission. The crew members were Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Payload Commander Michael Anderson, Mission Specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, and Laurel Clark, and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon.
The Astronauts Memorial Foundation, a private, not-for-profit organization, built and maintains the Space Mirror Memorial. It was dedicated in 1991 to honor all astronauts who lost their lives on missions or during training and since has been designated a National Memorial by Congress.
For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:
For information about Columbia’s STS-107 crew, visit:
