The anniversaries of the three major US space disasters occur within a week of each other.

January 27, 1967: Three astronauts in the Apollo program die trapped in the command module as fire sweeps through the craft during tests on the launchpad.

January 28, 1986: Challenger breaks up 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all 7 astronauts.

February 1, 2003: Columbia breaks up on re-entry, killing all 7 astronauts.

A Day of Remembrance will be held at Kennedy Space Center in memory of the sad losses of these exceptional people.

In addition to being an astronaut, Ronald E. McNair, PhD was a physicist, musician and sportsman. He was also a member of the Challenger crew in 1986.

Here is a wonderful story about him, told by his brother Carl: Eyes on the Stars

In April 1986 the families of the Challenger crew created the Challenger Center as a commitment to the educational mission of those they had loved and lost. It would be a place to get children interested in space and science, which could give them new opportunities in life.

In fact, although the first center opened two years later, today there is a network of centers, nearly fifty learning centers in four countries. Each year they involve forty thousand teachers and nearly half a million middle-school aged students. The curriculum is kept up to date through their partners in industry, universities, NASA and other government agencies.

You can find out more about what the centers do and where they are: Challenger.org It's a wonderful memorial.

At a wreath-laying in Arlington on February 1, Buzz Aldrin salutes. Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator is also in the picture.

Wreaths were laid in memory of those men and women who lost their lives in the quest for space exploration.

Arlington february 1, 2013

On Jan 31, 2013, the 10th anniversary of the Columbia disaster, PBS stations in the USA showed a film called Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope. Universe Today described it as telling "the little-known story of Columbia astronaut Ilan Ramon from Israel, the son of Holocaust survivors who became Israel’s first astronaut. Ramon carried into space a miniature Torah scroll that had survived the horrors of the Holocaust, given to a boy in a secret bar mitzvah observed in the pre-dawn hours in the notorious Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen."

I wasn't able to see this film. I wonder if anyone else did. I would be interested in your reaction.

Columbia crew The Columbia crew. From the left: Mission Specialist David Brown, Commander Rick Husband, Mission Specialists Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla and Michael Anderson, Pilot William McCool and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. Credit: NASA.