Join the Annual NASA Day of Remembrance at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

NASA, in partnership with The Astronauts Memorial Foundation, will host a Day of Remembrance ceremony at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

NASA, in partnership with the Astronauts Memorial Foundation and Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, will host NASA’s Day of Remembrance on Thursday, January 22.

The ceremony will begin beneath Space Shuttle Atlantis and will honor all astronauts who have sacrificed their lives while furthering the cause of space exploration and discovery. This year marks 40 years since the Challenger tragedy.

Following brief remarks beneath Space Shuttle Atlantis, the ceremony will move to the Space Mirror Memorial for a wreath laying. Attendees will be given flowers to pay respect to our fallen heroes.

The ceremony is scheduled to be streamed live on Kennedy Space Center’s Facebook, YouTube and X pages at 11 am ET on Thursday, Jan. 22.

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Each January, NASA pauses to honor members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery, including the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia.

Remembering Apollo 1

On Jan. 27, 1967, veteran astronaut Gus Grissom, first American spacewalker Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee were sitting atop the launch pad for a prelaunch test when a fire broke out in their Apollo capsule.The investigation into the fatal accident led to major design and engineering changes, making the Apollo spacecraft safer for the coming journeys to the Moon.

Remembering Challenger

Just 73 seconds after launch on the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, a booster engine failed and caused the shuttle Challenger to break apart, taking the lives of all seven crew members.President Ronald Reagan eulogized the crew, quoting from John Gillespie Magee’s poem “High Flight”: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

Remembering Columbia

The seven-member crew of the STS-107 mission was just 16 minutes from landing on the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, when Mission Control lost contact with the shuttle Columbia. A piece of foam, falling from the external tank during launch, had opened a hole in one of the shuttle’s wings, leading to the breakup of the orbiter upon re-entry.Addressing the nation, President Bush said, “Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.”

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