Friday is a somber day on the Space Coast as we remember 10 years since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center is remembering the seven astronauts killed a decade ago.

The crew onboard STS-107 were:

  • Commander: Rick Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer
  • Pilot: William McCool, a U.S. Navy commander
  • Payload Commander: Michael Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and physicist
  • Payload Specialist: Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut
  • Mission Specialist: Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer who was on her second space mission.
  • Mission Specialist: David Brown, a U.S. Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon
  • Mission Specialist: Laurel Blair Salton Clark, a U.S. Navy captain and flight surgeon.

Several special guests participated in the ceremony, including the widow of Colonel Rick Husband, the commander of the Columbia STS-107 mission.

Also at the ceremony was Eileen Collins, the first shuttle commander after the Columbia Disaster; and William H. Gerstenmaier, the NASA Human Exploration and Operations associate administrator who worked with NASA during the Columbia tragedy.

Six-time Grammy award-winner singer Bebe Winans sang the National Anthem at the beginning of the ceremony.

It was 10 years ago, when people along the Space Coast were waiting to catch a glimpse of shuttle Columbia landing at the Kennedy Space Center.

Columbia had just completed its 16-day scientific research mission in space. It was just 16 minutes away from landing, when it broke a part on re-entry, killing the astronauts on board.

State Senator Thad Altman is the president and CEO of the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, which is hosting this ceremony.

“When we lose our fellow human beings in these flights, it impacts us all, and that’s why we have this memorial. We have a living memorial here at the Center for Space Education and we have a memorial here where we can come and reflect and celebrate the life of those who’ve give the ultimate in service of space exploration,” Altman said.

The memory of Columbia and Challenger still lives on through education programs. NASA hopes they’ve learned from these disasters to make space travel safer.