NASA holds Day of Remembrance on Challenger Anniversary to remember all fallen astronauts

[bananas]

Source: WHNT TV

January 28, 2016 marks 30 years since the Shuttle Challenger had a booster engine fail, causing the shuttle to break apart and kill all seven crewmembers on board. It happened just 73 seconds after launch on the morning of January 28, 1986.

President Ronald Reagan eulogized the crew, quoting from the poem High Flight: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.'”

NASA has a day of events planned for today’s “Day of Remembrance” across the nation for members of NASA who “lost their lives while furthering space exploration and discovery.”

Below is a schedule of events (all times central):

8:00 a.m. – Administrator Charles Bolden begins the day with other agency officials for a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

9:00 a.m. – Wreath-laying ceremony at the Space Mirror Memorial located at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

10:00 a.m. – NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will observe the day with a candle-lighting ceremony for center employees, as well as a public event at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Marshall’s official visitor center.

10:00 a.m. – NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, will hold an event for employees that includes placing flowers at the Apollo, Challenger and Columbia Trees at the center.

The NASA.gov website has special videos produced for each of the three major disasters: Challenger, Apollo 1 and Columbia. We encourage you to follow the link to watch all three in their entirety.

Read more: http://whnt.com/2016/01/28/nasa-holds-day-of-remembrance-on-challenger-anniversary-to-remember-all-fallen-astronauts/

[Bluenorthwest]

1. What a day that was. I'll never forget it.

We spent the day up on the roof.

[randome]

2. I worked for the Social Security Administration at the time.

We had an office-wide radio playing in the background. My manager was talking to me at my desk when I interrupted her. We stood at the center of the office together and listened to the awful details.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Gregorian]

3. I was at a motorcycle junk yard when seeing it on the tv in the office.

A year later I was in a student in a vibrations course taught by an engineer who was given the job of analyzing the failure of the o-rings. That was 30 years ago?

[leftynyc]

4. I was home sick that day

and was so excited I was finally able to watch a liftoff live. I couldn't wrap my head around what I was watching.

[jzodda]

5. I was in social studies class

As a sophomore in high school. My teacher had competed in the competition to be the teacher that goes into space but lost of course. He had set up a TV and we all watched the launch. Its a day I won't forget ever.

[christx30]

6. I was in the fourth grade, at lunch.

My teacher came to get us at the end of lunch and we could plainly see she had been crying. She wheeled the TV into the room and just tuned to a random channel, because it was playing on repeat everywhere that day. We watched it 4 or 5 times before we turned it off and just sat there the rest of the day. We sang a few songs and tried to be happy.

[L. Coyote]

7. Where was V-P George Bush? What was he doing there? Is that why the launch wasn't cancelled?

If they hadn't been using the shuttle launch for political purposes, yea criminal political purposes, the launch would have been cancelled.

[shenmue]

8. I was in junior high