Looking Back and Looking Forward

NASA probe digs deeply into Columbia tragedy, Houston Chronicle
“On the final Thursday of each January, the American flag is carefully lowered to half staff at the Johnson Space Center in tribute to 17 astronauts who have died in searing national tragedies. A solemn ceremony commemorates the three Apollo 1 fliers who were killed in a launch-pad fire in 1967, the seven Challenger astronauts who died in an explosion seconds after launch in 1986, and the seven Columbia crew members who perished when the space shuttle shattered over Texas in 2003. It was the loss of the Columbia, though, that moved senior space agency officials to ask for the unprecedented: a second-by-second examination of the shuttle’s final moments.”