In addition to remembering the Apollo 1 crew, NASA will honor the last shuttle crews of both the Challenger and Columbia orbiters.

A rocket booster seal failed 73 seconds after Challenger lifted off on Jan. 28, 1986, causing the vehicle’s destruction and killing its STS-51L commander Francis “Dick” Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, mission specialists Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe—the first teacher to launch towards space [image].

“Christa was, is and will always be our first teacher in space,” said astronaut Barbara Morgan, who as a teacher from Idaho trained as McAuliffe’s back up and later became NASA’s first educator astronaut.

After more than 20 years of preparation and training, Morgan has a mission of her own with NASA’s STS-118 spaceflight set to launch towards the ISS on June 28. As both an educator and mission specialist, Morgan will help wield the ISS and shuttle robotic arms, adding that she remained committed to flying in space despite the Challenger disaster.

“There was a lot of thinking going on, we needed to think about what it is that we did wrong and the question about whether this was worth it,” Morgan told reporters this month, adding that her drive to educate children has been a constant guide. “For me, I can’t think of anything more important than our young people, and so the decision to continue was not difficult at all.”

NASA’s most recent shuttle tragedy - the 2003 loss of Columbia during landing—led to the loss of STS-107 commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, payload commander Michael Anderson and Ilan Ramon—Israel’s first astronaut [image].

After more than two years of recovery efforts, NASA resumed shuttle flights in July 2005, following that up with three orbiter missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006. The space agency plans to retire its remaining three orbiters—Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour—after ISS assembly is completed by September 2010.

“We have an opportunity to show once again that NASA can do what it says it’s going to do,” NASA chief Michael Griffin told space agency employees this month during an agency-wide update.