“My fifth grade teacher was big into space. That was the school year spanning from 1985 to 1986. My teacher was all about the Teacher in Space Project, so we signed up to be a part of Christa McAuliffe’s lessons from space. The whole school year was all about space. We actually had a school field trip. This was my first overnight school field trip, to go from Miami to Kennedy Space Center to view the Challenger launch. That’s how devoted she was. And so we went there in January 1986, but the original launch date was delayed. Being that it was a school trip that was already planned out, we couldn’t just hang out in the hotel room for extra days. We had to come back home. And of course, we watched the tragedy unfold live in my fifth grade classroom. I think that was part of the turning point for me, that fifth grade year. Shifting from a love of airplanes and aviation towards space and space themes.
“I said to myself, ‘I want to make sure that never happens again. I want to fix it.’ Even at that early age, I thought I could fix things. I was always taking apart things in the house, much to my mom’s chagrin, and trying to figure out how they work and putting them back together again. And so this fixer mentality has been with me — and what do you know? I’m in safety now, literally making sure that what happened with Challenger and what happened with Columbia doesn’t happen again.”
— Tremayne Days, Gateway Safety and Mission Assurance Manager, Johnson Space Center
Image Credit: NASA / Robert Markowitz
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos