This page is dedicated to the memory of those brave astronauts lost in the Columbia Tragedy - February 1, 2003. RICK HUSBAND, 45 -Commander; Amarillo, Texas Rick Husband was a devout Christian, a man who wasn’t embarrassed to discuss his faith on national TV. An Air Force colonel and the commander of the Columbia, he said one of the things he was most looking forward to about his second trip to space was learning more about Judaism from Ilan Ramon. Each astronaut was allowed to bring some personal effects on the mission; among the things Husband brought onboard were trinkets from Boys Ranch, a Christian home for at-risk kids located just outside his hometown of Amarillo, Texas. He was also fiercely determined. He decided he was going to be an astronaut as a child; despite three rejections, he kept applying for the job. When he was finally chosen, he quickly rose to the top. He was the pilot on the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station. Known as a phenomenal airman, he had flown more than 40 types of aircraft; colleagues said he exuded a quiet, almost egoless leadership. Soon after assembling his crew for the Columbia mission, Husband decided he wanted to make a very good crew into one of the best ever. He booked them on an 11-day outdoor survival trip, and in the years since the trip he’s kept in touch with John Kanengieter, the trip’s leader. While in space, he sent Kanengieter an e-mail: “He wrote, ‘I’m so proud of my crew, I could pop.’ He really talked like that.” Husband, who was married with two children, was also known to break spontaneously into song. He was active in his church choir, but also would sing impromptu parodies and grew up lending his rich baritone to barbershop quartets. But it was his faith that sustained him. “Rick was right with God,” says Tammy Jernigan, who flew with Husband on his previous space trip. “He’s in heaven now.” WILLIAM MCCOOL, 41 Pilot; San Diego People who knew the man at the controls of the Columbia felt more than lucky. “Everyone should meet a Willie McCool in their lifetime,” says Al Cantello, his cross-country coach at Annapolis. It wasn’t only the shuttle pilot’s contagious smile, although that certainly played an important part. “He was an inspiration to be with,” says his U.S. Naval Academy classmate Mark Patterson. “Nothing ever got him down.” McCool was an Eagle Scout, captain of the cross-country team, second in his class at the Naval Academy, the test pilot entrusted with the Columbia’s helm. “Whatever he decided to do, Willie did it to perfection,” recalls Patterson. “When he decided he wanted to be an astronaut, you knew he’d make it.” Still, he was anything but arrogant. John Kanengieter met him when the seven astronauts attended an 11-day outdoor training session in Wyoming: “We were laughing the week before they got here, thinking, ‘Jeez, this guy’s an astronaut and his name is McCool—he must think he’s Tom Cruise.’ And he’s the closest thing to Opie Taylor.” For his first space flight, the Columbia mission, McCool invited as many old friends as he could to the launch. Cantello was there. “I was so proud,” he told NEWSWEEK. “It’s been 20 years since he graduated.” It seemed as if McCool invited practically everyone he knew. “Years ago Willie went to Switzerland with five other midshipmen and stayed with a doctor,” says Cantello. “He invited him to the launch. He invited the contractor on his house to the launch.” The pilot’s unfailing good humor and outgoing manner made it all the tougher for friends to comprehend the disaster. “Willie’s one of those people you don’t expect a tragedy like this to happen to,” says Patterson. “He was blessed. And we were blessed to know him.” MICHAEL ANDERSON, 43 Payload Commander; Spokane, Wash. As schoolchildren in the 1960s, Michael Anderson and his sister Brenda had bunk beds. On Saturday mornings the top bunk was their spaceship. “Let’s go to the moon!” he would call down to her. He never quite reached the moon, but he got closer than most of us. After earning his B.S. in physics at the University of Washington (“I think I was the only African-American physics major at that university,” he later recalled), he joined the Air Force and became a pilot. NASA chose him for its space program in 1994. “Michael’s desire was to get into space, and he made it a reality,” his mother told NEWSWEEK. “He was doing what he loved, and that’s my consolation.” Her son was basically the Columbia’s science officer, responsible for all of the many experiments performed on the 16-day flight. The Columbia mission was Anderson’s second trip into space. His first was a 1998 Endeavor mission delivering scientific gear, water and crew to the Russians’ accident-plagued Mir space platform. The visit left a powerful impression on him. He spoke afterward of how much he admired the Russians’ determination in refusing to abandon the Mir, even after it suffered a near-disastrous fire in February 1997 and collided with a remote-controlled cargo craft that June. Following that example is the only way humans can make it into space, Anderson argued. “We are going to have accidents. We are going to have things happen that we didn’t plan on,” he said. “If we’re going to be serious about exploring space, then we’re going to have to have the resolve that the Russians showed here.” KALPANA CHAWLA, 41 Mission Specialist; Seabrook, Texas Kalpana Chawla was in charge of more than a dozen experiments onboard the Columbia, but she was in love with the poetry of space travel as much as the science. “In the pre-sleep period, when you’re looking out the window, you’re floating,” she said, describing her one previous trip in space. “The Nile River looks like a lifeline in the Sahara ... Earth is very beautiful. I wish everyone could see it.” Her dreams of space travel started early. As a rugged tomboy running around in jeans and old T shirts, she would lie in her family’s courtyard on summer nights, staring into the sky and dreaming of the day when she could afford to own a telescope. Chawla immigrated to America from India in the 1980s. After earning a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas and an advanced degree from the University of Colorado, she was hired at NASA’s Ames Research Center. In 1994 she was selected by NASA as an astronaut trainee, and on her first trip into space in 1997 she traveled more than 6.5 million miles. But she never forgot the kids back home. Since 1998 she and her husband had sponsored students from the school where she studied as a child. They never forgot her, either. On Saturday night in Karnal, India, a celebration was planned at her old school to watch the Columbia land. One student stood stunned, tears running down her cheeks, clutching autographed pictures of Chawla and the other Columbia astronauts. “She told us to dream,” the student said. “She loved us so much.” DAVID BROWN, 46 Mission Specialist; Arlington, Va. By the time David Brown was 6 years old, he was already paging through Reader’s Digest. “He was always so curious,” his mother, Dorothy Brown, remembered. Athletic and tender at the same time—he used to make his mom tapes of his favorite music, stuff like Enya and Simon & Garfunkel—Brown was a star gymnast on the parallel bars at Yorktown High School and went on to make the varsity team at The College of William & Mary. After college he joined the circus on a lark, working as an acrobat, tumbler, stilt walker and seven-foot-unicycle rider. After the circus, he went to Eastern Virginia Medical School, and immediately after his internship he joined the Navy. In 1988 he was tapped to train as a pilot, a rare honor for a doctor, and he graduated at the top of his aviation class. Soon he achieved his ultimate dream. In 1996 he became an astronaut. “When David was young, he would say that being an astronaut was too much to even dream for,” his mom said. “But the flying thing got him. He was great. He could land on ships in the middle of the night. Flying was his life. He even lived on Airline Drive.” This was Brown’s first trip into space, and he was serving as the Columbia’s un- official archivist—during the multiple years the crew trained together, through a bike trip in Europe and a backpacking trip in Wyoming, he brought along a personal video recorder. As John Kanengieter, the backpacking trip’s leader, said, “When I was watching the launch and the shuttle doors were closing, I could see the video camera there. That was David. He never stopped.” LAUREL CLARK, 41 Mission Specialist; Racine, Wis. As thrilled as he was to attend the launch, 8-year-old Iain Clark didn’t want his mother going into space. “He wanted to know why Daddy couldn’t go up in space instead of Mommy,” says Laurel Clark’s old schoolmate Matthew Solberg. The fact is, she never set out to be an astronaut. She wanted to be a pediatrician. But she came from a family of nine children and stepchildren, and medical school was expensive. She joined the Navy “purely for financial reasons,” she later recalled; it was the only way she could think of to pay the bills. After earning her M.D., she served a tour as an undersea medical officer. She was about to begin training as a flight surgeon when she applied to NASA, almost on a whim but with her husband’s encouragement. When they didn’t accept her on the first pass, she applied again—and this time she made it. Her responsibility aboard the Columbia was medical and biological research. In particular she was investigating such topics as gene transfer in plants (which for some reason seems to work better in space) and the way bones lose their calcium in free fall. She took a personal interest in the latter question; osteoporosis ran in the family. Shortly before she died, she sent an e-mail to close friends and relatives. “Viewing Earth from space is spectacular,” she wrote. “I feel blessed to be here.” Before the mission, members of the local media in Madison, Wis., asked what advice she would give to an aspiring astronaut. “Do what it is you love to do,” she said. “You’ll do a really good job at it because you love it, and you’ll be doing something that you love. Not everyone’s in luck to be an astronaut.” She loved many things. “Laurel loved nature, hiking and camping,” her 38-year-old brother, Dan Salton, told NEWSWEEK. “She loved animals and people.” She enjoyed scuba diving and parachuting. She had a special fondness for the mountains, and for Scotland, where her husband, Navy Capt. Jonathan B. Clark, proposed to her. She named her two cats Haggis and Neeps (Scottish for “turnips”). More than anything else, though, “she loved her son,” says Salton. “He’s the one we’re all thinking of.” ILAN RAMON, 48 Payload Specialist; Israel Months before he was to become the first Israeli to travel into space, Ilan Ramon paid a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The Air Force colonel was searching for an appropriate object to take with him on the mission when museum curators showed him a tattered pencil drawing of the Earth as seen from the moon. The sketch had been done by Peter Ginz, a 16-year-old Jewish boy who died in Auschwitz in 1944. Ramon, whose own mother and grandmother survived Auschwitz and emigrated to Israel after World War II, was captivated. “I feel that my journey fulfills the dream of Peter Ginz 58 years later,” he said just before carrying the fragment aboard the Columbia. Ramon joined the space shuttle mission as a payload specialist, running an experiment that tracks dust particles from sandstorms. But it was the astronaut’s role as a symbol, not a scientist, that inspired his war-fatigued and hero-starved countrymen. Television devoted endless hours and newspapers countless inches to his mission. FIRST HEBREW ASTRONAUT SINCE ELIJAH, trumpeted Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yediot Achronot, referring to the Jewish prophet who, according to the Bible’s Book of Kings, ascended to heaven aboard a fiery chariot. Kindergarten teachers instructed their kids to post newspaper photos of Ramon on the walls; a mattress manufacturer said he would name a line after him; the Israeli Postal Authority planned a commemorative stamp. Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Beer Sheva, Ramon served with distinction as a fighter pilot in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. In 1981, he was one of eight F-16 pilots who bombed Iraq’s unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor, after flying for hours without detection over enemy territory. Ramon was tapped to become Israel’s first astronaut in 1997. He moved to Houston with his wife and four kids, ranging from 5 to 15, and spent 4½ years in training. Although he was a self-described secular Jew, Ramon honored his heritage and religion aboard the flight. He asked NASA to provide him with kosher food, tried to observe the Sabbath on board and carried both a pocket-size version of the Bible presented to him by Israeli President Moshe Katzav and a Torah scroll given to him by a concentration-camp survivor. “From space, Israel appeared small and very beautiful,” he declared. “The quiet that envelopes space makes the beauty even more powerful, and I only hope that the quiet can one day spread to my country.” A devoted family man, Ramon stayed in touch with his loved ones from space via e-mail. “Although everything here is incredible, I can’t wait to see you. Big hugs and kisses to the children,” he wrote his wife a couple of nights before his death. Ramon’s father, Eliezer Wolferman, was reading some of those messages live on Israeli TV when NASA lost contact with the astronauts. Wolferman was taken to a side room to watch the broadcast off-air. Devastated, he left for Houston later that night to join Ramon’s widow and children. “Ilan regarded this mission as something he could do for the world,” Ramon’s sister-in-law Orna Bar told NEWSWEEK. “But all that doesn’t matter now because he’s gone. We’re all suffering terribly right now.” It is a loss shared by millions of her countrymen.