Arlington National Cemetery
The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Memorial was dedicated on May 20, 1986, in memory of the crew of flight STS-51-L, who died during launch on January 28, 1986. Transcribed on the back of the stone is the text of the John Gillespie Magee, Jr. poem "High Flight", which was quoted by then President Ronald Reagan when he addressed the disaster. Although many remains were identified and returned to the families for private burial, some were not, and were laid to rest under the marker. Two crew members, Scobee and Smith, are buried in Arlington. On February 1, 2004, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe dedicated a similar memorial to those who died when the Shuttle "Columbia" broke apart during reentry on February 1, 2003. Astronauts Laurel Clark, David Brown and Michael Anderson, who were killed in the "Columbia" disaster, are also buried in Arlington.
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
"Columbia"s flight data recorder was found near Hemphill, Texas, on March 19, 2003. Unlike commercial jet aircraft, the space shuttles did not have flight data recorders intended for after-crash analysis. Instead, the vehicle data were transmitted in real time to the ground via telemetry. Since "Columbia" was the first shuttle, it had a special flight data OEX (Orbiter EXperiments) recorder, designed to help engineers better understand vehicle performance during the first test flights. After the initial Shuttle test-flights were completed, the recorder was never removed from "Columbia", and it was still functioning on the crashed flight. It recorded many hundreds of parameters, and contained very extensive logs of structural and other data, which allowed the CAIB to reconstruct many of the events during the process leading to breakup. Investigators could often use the loss of signals from sensors on the wing to track how the damage progressed. This was correlated with forensic debris analysis conducted at Lehigh University and other tests to obtain a final conclusion about the probable course of events.