![]() Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. She was contributing writer for for 10 years before joining full-time. Įlizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. I don't ever want to have to do that again."Įlizabeth Howell is the co-author of " Why Am I Taller ?" (ECW Press, 2022 with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. I was the one that had to tell the families they weren't coming home. I knew we could have done something," Cabana said of the fatal breakup that killed seven astronauts 20 years ago this year. Cabana recalled personally briefing the families of the Columbia astronauts about their deaths, after standing at the landing runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in vain for STS-107's return. ![]() Nelson, Melroy and associate administrator Bob Cabana, who have all flown in the space shuttle, repeatedly emphasized that responsibility for spaceflight safety lies with everyone, including management. "But each of us should remember that it could happen to us." "We all know when we're trying something new, we're never going to be 100 percent safe because there are things that we can't predict that might happen," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy, a former shuttle astronaut, told attendees at the town hall. NASA plans to include additional safety briefings this year on top of its monthly safety panel discussions as one step to keeping engineers informed, agency officials said.Īpollo 1 crew, left to right: Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. To be sure, older programs can also be prone to safety issues, but young spacecraft are subject to larger unknowns simply due to a lack of flight knowledge. Those are still relatively low numbers compared to the space shuttle or Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, which have exceeded 130 flights each, but Dragon's flight rate is comparable to older NASA programs like Mercury or Gemini. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Crew Dragon has flown eight times with people on board: Twice for private ventures and half a dozen times for NASA. Boeing's Starliner docked with the International Space Station in 2022 as well, but with no astronauts yet on board. Orion made it around the moon last year and back again during Artemis 1, but only with mannequins in the crew seats. In the top row (L to R) are astronauts David M. Clark, mission specialist and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist. On the bottom row (L to R) are astronauts Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist Rick D. This year, 2023, marks the 20th anniversary of the 2003 failure of Columbia with seven people on board, during STS-107. Related: Do space tourists really understand the risk they're taking? Lessons learned are especially front in mind, agency officials emphasized, as NASA flies new human-rated vehicles that are relatively untested in spaceflight. This year will mark the 20th anniversary of mission STS-107 aboard Columbia, along with the 37th anniversary of mission STS-51L on Challenger and the 56th anniversary of Apollo 1's launch pad fire.Įach of these incidents arose from a complex intersection of human and technical error, and NASA officials acknowledged in the town hall that the Day of Remembrance remains not only delicate, but relevant. 27, 1967 and the breakup of shuttle Columbia with seven crew members on board on Feb. 28, 1986 a fatal fire that claimed three Apollo 1 crew members on Jan. NASA's Day of Remembrance takes place each year close to three significant failures in spaceflight: Challenger's loss on Jan. The most recent name, Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo co-pilot Michael Alsbury, was added in 2020. ![]() More than 20 names are inscribed on a Space Mirror Memorial at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center Complex near Orlando, Florida, which includes most astronauts who died while serving at space agencies or during private spaceflights. NASA commemorated Challenger and all those who died in the pursuit of spaceflight in the town hall, held two days before the agency's annual Day of Remembrance that discusses spaceflight safety and commemorates people of all nations who have lost their lives during a spaceflight, or in training or testing to get there.
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