Today is the 10th anniversary of the Columbia accident. NASA held memorial events at Arlington National Cemetery and Kennedy Space Center.

There are hundreds of articles and commentaries in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other publications on line to day. (See, for example, spacetoday.net and news.google.com) Here is a sampling of items about the tragedy and its affect on the US space program:

• Day of Remembrance – Messages from President Obama and NASA Administrator Bolden – NASA
• 10 years later, loss of Columbia and crew has changed NASA forever – Florida Today
• President Obama, NASA Officials, Families Honor Fallen Astronauts – spacepolicyonline.com
• Leaders look back at the Columbia tragedy — and look ahead to Mars – Cosmic Log
• Top 10 myths surrounding NASA’s Columbia space shuttle disaster – Jim Oberg/MSNBC
• Ten (and three) years later… – Space Politics
• Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 1: The anniversaries of space tragedies and why we must continue to explore. – Phil Plait/Slate.com
• NASA’s mission is not safety – Rand Simberg/USA Today

See also the earlier post here about this week of sad anniversaries and it includes links to web resources for these space tragedies.

This week marks anniversaries for three tragedies for NASA and the United States:

• Apollo 1 – January 27, 1967  – a fire in their capsule during a test on the pad kills three Apollo astronauts:
  • Gus Grissom
  • Ed White
  • Roger Chaffee
• Challenger STS 51-L –  January 28, 1986 – leak in a seal between segments of a solid fuel rocket booster led to the failure of the vehicle during launch and the deaths of the crew members:
  • Francis R. Scobee – Commander,
  • Michael J. Smith – Pilot ,
  • Judith A. Resnik – Mission Specialist, Ellison S. Onizuka – Mission Specialist, Ronald E. McNair – Mission Specialist
  • Gregory B. Jarvis – Payload Specialist
  • Sharon Christa McAuliffe – Payload Specialist
• Columbia STS-107 – February 1, 2003 – damage from falling ice, which had built up on the top of the external tank, to a thermal protection panel  on the wing led to failure of the wing during re-entry and the deaths of the crew members:
  • Rick D. Husband – Commander
  • William C. McCool – Pilot
  • Michael P. Anderson – Payload Commander
  • David Brown – Mission Specialist
  • Kalpana Chawla – Mission Specialist
  • Laurel Blair Salton Clark  – Mission Specialist
  • Ilan Ramon –  Payload Specialist

Here is a sampling of articles and commentary about these events (I will be adding more as the week goes by):

• General:
  • NASA celebrates its fallen astronauts – Cosmic Log
• Apollo 1:
  • Apollo 1: The Fatal Fire – Space.com
  • The Tragedy of Apollo 1 – Lights in the Dark
• Challenger:
  • Twenty-Seven Years – Transterrestrial Musings
• Columbia:
  • The Columbia Disaster and Space Program Safety – Space Safety Magazine