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Seven Souls aboard the Columbia die
as shuttle shatters
Saturday, February 1^st ,2003

NASA had officially set January 16, 2003 as the launch date for the space shuttle Columbia and a crew of seven on a 16-day science mission. The crew were (L-R) Mission Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon (the first Israeli astronaut), Mission Specialist David Brown, Payload Commander Michael Anderson, Mission Specialist Laurel Clark and Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla (born in India) They are shown at a Dec. 20 news conference. Photo by Joe Skipper/Reuters (Reuters)

Today February 1, 2003 the seven astronauts died when their space shuttle the Columbia broke up about 38 miles above Texas on its way to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The catastrophe occurred in the last 16 minutes of the 16-day mission as the spaceship glided in for a landing in Florida. This tragedy echoed the Challenger explosion almost exactly 17 years earlier.

"The Columbia is lost, there are no survivors." said President Bush, after he telephoned the families of the astronauts to console them. "The same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today," Bush said, his eyes glistening. "The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth but we can pray they are safely home."

"High Flight":

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds--and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of--wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence, hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along,

And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

World War II-era poem written by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr., an American citizen who gave his life flying with the Royal Canadian Air Force at the beginning of the war, prior to America joining in.