Nobody Memorializes Like My NASA

From the NASA PA Office to my inbox to you:

Glenn Mahone/Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington Jan. 6, 2004
(Phone: 202/358-1898/1600)


RELEASE: 04-009

SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA CREW MEMORIALIZED ON MARS

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Spirit Rover in honor of the astronauts who died in the tragic accident of the Space Shuttle Columbia in February. The area in the vast flatland of the Gusev Crater where Spirit landed this weekend will be called the Columbia Memorial Station.

Since its historic landing, Spirit has been sending extraordinary images of its new surroundings on the red planet over the past few days. Among them, an image of a memorial plaque placed on the spacecraft to Columbia's astronauts and the STS-107 mission.

The plaque is mounted on the back of Spirit's high-gain antenna, a disc-shaped tool used for communicating directly with Earth. The plaque is aluminum and approximately six inches in diameter. The memorial plaque was attached March 28, 2003, at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
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It is just as I have always suspected, then: these Seven, like the Challenger crew and the Apollo Three before them, talk to us still.