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The Mission Continues: The Space Shuttle Columbia National Tour Visits Marshall

Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.

George W. Bush

George W. Bush

43rd President of the United States

On Feb. 1, 2003, space shuttle Columbia was returning from Earth orbit following a successful 16-day mission. Columbia and the seven-person crew of STS-107 never made it home. But a new traveling exhibit and tour helps ensure that the legacies and lessons of the crew and space shuttle live on.

The Space Shuttle Columbia National Tour opened at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on Nov. 4 with a town hall and panel discussion Nov. 5. The tour — which will close Nov. 8 — includes a display of artifacts from Columbia and discussions with employees on lessons learned.

A panel discussing lessons learned from Columbia featured, from left, Steve Miley,  Bill Hill,  Preston Jones,  and Mike Ciannil
A panel discussing lessons learned from Columbia featured, from left, Steve Miley, associate director at Marshall; Bill Hill, director of advanced technology at Marshall; Preston Jones, associate director, technical at Marshall; and Mike Ciannill, Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned program manager at Kennedy.
NASA/Emmett Given

The goal of the exhibit and week of activities is to educate the NASA workforce about the accident and share the lessons learned to ensure NASA’s current and future missions are as successful as they possibly can be.

“The path to the Moon and Mars goes through Marshall, making it crucial that the team understands and is prepared to handle complex decisions where mission success and lives are on the line,” said Preston Jones, the associate director, technical, at Marshall. “This week’s discussions are an opportunity to increase their understanding of NASA’s Technical Authority and how risk leadership is executed on our missions. These types of conversations are crucial for Marshall veterans and early career engineers and leaders toward understanding what happened on Columbia and how those lessons can prevent another accident from occurring.”

Marshall is the second NASA field center to host the program, which began at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in April. The tour, to include stops at all 10 NASA centers, is managed by Mike Ciannilli, Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned program manager at Kennedy.

“Columbia’s helping us towards the future. This was a very dark time in our history. This was a very difficult time in our history. We’re being extremely vigilant to never forget this incident, and now we’re impassioned to make sure we share this incident and the lessons learned resulting from it with a whole new generation of folks,” said Ciannilli.

Learn more about The Space Shuttle Columba National Tour by listening to episode 7 of the APPEL Knowledge Services “Small Steps, Giant Leaps” podcast here and on common platforms: