David M. Brown
David McDowell Brown (April 16, 1956 – February 1, 2003) was a United States Navy captain and a NASA astronaut. He died on his first spaceflight, when the Space Shuttle "Columbia" (STS-107) disintegrated during orbital reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Brown became an astronaut in 1996, but had not served on a space mission prior to the "Columbia" disaster. Brown was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Brown, the 1986 recipient of the Navy Operational Flight Surgeon of the Year award, received numerous decorations including:
The symbol indicates a posthumous award.
Space Shuttle program
The accidents led to national level inquiries and detailed analysis of why the accidents occurred. There was a significant pause where changes were made before the Shuttles returned to flight. The "Columbia" disaster occurred in 2003, but STS took more than a year off before returning to flight in June 2005 with the STS-114 mission. The previous break was between January 1986 (when the "Challenger" disaster occurred) and 32 months later when STS-26 was launched on September 29, 1988.