On Friday NASA officials, astronauts, schoolchildren and
family members gathered near a place that five years ago should have been the
landing place for the Columbia,
in an emotional ceremony.
Columbia
never made its way back home on February 1, 2003.
Evelyn Husband-Thompson remembers: "This morning, I
couldn't stop thinking about Rick and Willie and Kalpana and Dave and Mike and Laurel and Ilan,"
referring to the rest of the crew.
“All of our families went through so much that day. We so
miss them, and we will never forget them,” the Associated Press reports.
Every guest present at the ceremony received long-stemmed
rose which were placed in front the giant shiny granite marker with the names
all NASA's 24 astronauts who lost their lives in the line of duty.
Israel,
the homeland of astronaut Ilan Ramon, was represented by 44 ninth-graders. Some
of them were from the same school the Ramon attended.
15-year-old Roman Rashchupkin said: "He's Israeli, so
it's important. He learned in our school."
India,
the homeland of Columbia astronaut Kalpana
Chawla, was represented by the chairman of India's space research
organization, G. Madhavan Nair. He said that the loss of the astronauts was a
loss for the whole world.
Former shuttle commander Bill Readdy wanted to make sure
that even though the Columbia seven are memorialized here on Earth, "much
more importantly than any physical monument, they're memorialized right here in
our hearts."
Present at the ceremony were officials of NASA, from the
past and the present, even the chief of the space agency, Michael Griffin, who
said that is very crucial to learn from the mistakes in the past.
Readdy called every member of Columbia’s crew by name and said: "We'll
always miss your easy laughter and your smiling faces. God willing, five years
from now, they'll have even more to be proud of us about as we take even longer
strides ... back to the moon and onward toward Mars. May God bless the crew of Columbia."
He added: "Americans don't quit and we won't quit.
We'll never quit."
