Rick Husband 

He had just one other space flight under his belt before he was given the role of commander.

"I think a lot of it has to do with being in the right place at the right time, for starters," Husband, a 45-year-old Air Force colonel from Amarillo, Texas, said during a preflight interview.

Husband was married with two children.  The former test pilot was selected as an astronaut in 1994 on his fourth try. Space flight was his lifelong passion, along with singing. Husband, a baritone, had barbershop quartet experience and sang in church choirs.

He also enjoyed water and snow skiing, cycling, and spending time with his family.

Husband graduated from Amarillo High School in 1975. He received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Texas Tech University in 1980, and a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from California State University, Fresno, in 1990.

Lt. Col. Michael Anderson

Payload Commander

Space shuttle astronaut Michael P. Anderson, 43, left his hometown of Spokane years ago, but he never stopped inspiring young people here.

Anderson's former Sunday School teacher carries a signed picture of Anderson, an African-American, speaking to young people. "It shows him in an astronaut suit standing next to the Columbia space ship," the Rev. Happy Watkins of New Hope Baptist Church said Saturday morning. "The kids can look at him and see he is black."

"It's inspiring to show," Watkins added. "If he can aspire to be the best, you can be the best."

Anderson's wife, Sandra Hawkins, formerly of Spokane, and the couple's two daughters, ages 9 and 11, now live in the Houston area, where the space program is based.

Anderson returned to Spokane numerous times to speak with young people in schools.

Anderson was a payload commander and lieutenant colonel in charge of science experiments on the Columbia, NASA's oldest shuttle.

A native of Plattsburgh, N.Y., Anderson was the son of an Air Force man and grew up on military bases. The family eventually settled in the Spokane area, where Watkins remembered Anderson as a quiet and determined youngster.

"He was a very gentle, determined young man who was focused," Watkins said. "One of his early goals was he wanted to be a pilot."

"He was just a role model young man," Watkins said. "It's a real, real heartbreaking tragedy."

His parents and in-laws live in Spokane. A neighbor of the Andersons in Spokane answered the phone Saturday morning, saying the astronaut's parents were not ready to make any statements and were being comforted by friends.

"It's hard on them right now," said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Anderson graduated from Cheney High School, 15 miles southwest Spokane, in 1977, then went to the University of Washington, where he earned a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy in 1981. He got a master's degree in physics from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., in 1990.

Anderson was an instructor pilot and tactics officer at Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York when NASA selected him in 1994. He reported to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in March 1995, went through a year of training and qualified for flight crew assignment as a mission specialist. Initially, he was assigned technical duties in flight support. He flew to Russia's Mir space station in 1998.

While Anderson loved flying, both in aircraft and spacecraft, he said he didn't like the riskiness of launching.

"There's always that unknown," he said in an interview before Columbia's launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 16.

A career in space was a lifelong dream.

"I was always fascinated by science-fiction shows, shows like Star Trek and Lost in Space, he says. "And going out of your house and looking up and seeing jets fly by, that seemed like another very exciting thing to do. So I knew I wanted to fly airplanes, and I knew I wanted to do something really exciting, and I always had a natural interest in science. So it all kind of came together at a very young age, and I thought being an astronaut would be the perfect job."

Hal Sutter was one of Anderson's teachers at Cheney High School. "He was certainly a student leader," Sutter told KHQ-TV in Spokane Saturday morning. "The kids really respected him."

A plaque showing the space shuttle, along with pictures of Anderson talking to students, is permanently on display at Cheney High School.

Student Gavin Garrett remembered a recent speech Anderson made, recalling that he said a toy airplane he got from his father initially sparked his interest in flight. "He set his goals high, but achievable at the same time," Garrett said.

Kalpana Chawla (Ph.D) 
NASA Astronaut

Kalpana was  born in Karnal, India, 41-year-old Kalpana Chawla enjoys flying, hiking, back-packing, and reading. She holds Certificated Flight Instructor's license with airplane and glider ratings, Commercial Pilot's licenses for single- and multi-engine land and seaplanes, and Gliders, and instrument rating for airplanes. She enjoys flying aerobatics and tail-wheel airplanes.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Tagore School, Karnal, India, in 1976. Bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, 1982. Master of science degree in aerospace engineering from University of Texas, 1984. Doctorate of philosophy in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado, 1988.

EXPERIENCE: In 1988, Kalpana Chawla started work at NASA Ames Research Center in the area of powered-lift computational fluid dynamics. Her research concentrated on simulation of complex air flows encountered around aircraft such as the Harrier in "ground-effect." Following completion of this project she supported research in mapping of flow solvers to parallel computers, and testing of these solvers by carrying out powered lift computations. In 1993 Kalpana Chawla joined Overset Methods Inc., Los Altos, California, as Vice President and Research Scientist to form a team with other researchers specializing in simulation of moving multiple body problems. She was responsible for development and implementation of efficient techniques to perform aerodynamic optimization. Results of various projects that Kalpana Chawla participated in are documented in technical conference papers and journals.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in December 1994, Kalpana Chawla reported to the Johnson Space Center in March 1995 as an astronaut candidate in the 15th Group of Astronauts. After completing a year of training and evaluation, she was assigned as crew representative to work technical issues for the Astronaut Office EVA/Robotics and Computer Branches. Her assignments included work on development of Robotic Situational Awareness Displays and testing space shuttle control software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory.

In November, 1996, Kalpana Chawla was assigned as mission specialist and prime robotic arm operator on STS-87 (November 19 to December 5, 1997). STS-87 was the fourth U.S Microgravity Payload flight and focused on experiments designed to study how the weightless environment of space affects various physical processes, and on observations of the Sun's outer atmospheric layers. Two members of the crew performed an EVA (spacewalk) which featured the manual capture of a Spartan satellite, in addition to testing EVA tools and procedures for future Space Station assembly. In completing her first mission, Kalpana Chawla traveled 6.5 million miles in 252 orbits of the Earth and logged 376 hours and 34 minutes in space. In January, 1998, Kalpana Chawla was assigned as crew representative for shuttle and station flight crew equipment. Subsequently, she was assigned as the lead for Astronaut Office’s Crew Systems and Habitability section. She is currently assigned to the crew of STS-107 scheduled for launch in 2003

Laurel Clark

Physician Commander

Before Columbia's launch, Dr. Laurel Clark, 41, said her family, including her 8-year-old son, Lain, sometimes worried about her being an astronaut.

"To me, there's a lot of different things that we do during life that could potentially harm us, and I choose not to stop doing those things," Clark said. "They've all come to accept that it's what I want to do."

The Columbia mission was the Racine, Wis., native's first.

Clark and her husband, Jonathan B. Clark, met in Scotland, where she dove with Navy divers and Navy Seals, performing medical evacuations from U.S. submarines. The Clarks lived in Houston.

Clark joined the Navy to pay her way through medical school, serving as a flight surgeon and performing medical evacuations from submarines until space beckoned and the adventurous scientist sought a new challenge.

"She had done something in a world usually reserved for men, and she was pleased at the opportunity," her aunt, Betty Haviland said.

"It had been an absolutely flawless flight," her brother, Daniel Salton, said in a telephone interview Saturday. "To have this happen with 15 minutes to go until it was over was just unbelievable."

Salton, who lives in Milwaukee and had been at Cape Canaveral for the Jan. 16 launch, got up at 5 a.m. Saturday to monitor Columbia's progress live on his computer.

When the shuttle lost communication with NASA, he didn't realize what was happening, he said.

"It took about 10 minutes for me to catch on that something was wrong," he said.

One day earlier, he had received an e-mail from his sister about how much she was enjoying her experience aboard the shuttle.

"She loved it," Salton said. "I'm just so glad she got to get up to space and got to see it because that had been a dream for a long time."

Clark's aunt and uncle, Betty and Doug Haviland, who live in Ames, Iowa, also received Clark's e-mail.

"She was, you know, thrilled, taking lots of pictures and could see the area in Wisconsin on one of their pass overs where they had lived for several years ... looking forward to sharing all this with her friends and family," Haviland said.

The Havilands, who lost their son, Timothy, in the attack on the World Trade Center, said they were in shock and grieving.

Clark was born in Ames while her father studied at Iowa State University. She lived in the central Iowa town for two years before moving with her family to Racine. She graduated from Horlick High School.

Clark was on board to help with Columbia's more than 80 science experiments, including studies of astronaut health and safety, advanced technology development and Earth and space sciences.

"The one thing that I'm looking forward to the most is being able to look down on the Earth from that height," Clark told the Racine Journal Times in 2001. "To see our entire planet Earth as one living unit."

She had already used her medical and scientific expertise to help create an astronaut treadmill in use on the international space station.

"She wasn't just intelligent," Salton said. "All the astronauts are just amazing people. She's just one of those people who made the right moves. She got along with people... She saw the path to be an astronaut was open -- she went at it full throttle all the way."

Clark joined NASA in 1996 and earned a flight assignment as a mission specialist after completing two years of training.

Pilot Commander William McCool

McCool was a Navy commander from Lubbock, Texas. He graduated second in his 1983 class at the Naval Academy, went on to test pilot school and became an astronaut in 1996.

This was the first spaceflight for McCool, who was married with three sons.

McCool was born in San Diego, Calif. He enjoyed running, mountain biking, back country hiking/camping, swimming, playing guitar and chess.

McCool graduated from Coronado High School in Lubbock in 1979.

Pilot Captain 
David Brown

Brown, a Navy pilot and a physician, received his undergraduate biology degree from William and Mary in 1978 and earned his medical degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk in 1982.

Brown joined the Navy after his medical internship and went on to fly the A-6E Intruder and FA-18 Hornet.

NASA chose him as an astronaut in 1996. A mission specialist, he helped with the scientific experiments on the shuttle Columbia. He worked the graveyard shift on Columbia's round-the-clock science mission.

Brown, 46, soared into orbit on Jan. 16 with a flag from Yorktown High in Arlington, his alma mater, that another graduate took up Mount Everest. "I'm going to get it a little bit higher up, but I won't have to walk as far to get it there," he said before his first spaceflight.

Brown had said Friday from orbit that the crew was looking forward to coming home.

"As much as we've enjoyed it up here, we're also starting to look forward to seeing all the people back on Earth that we miss and love so much," he said.

Ilan Ramone 
(Colonel Israel Air Force) 
Payload Specialist

Forty-eight years old, born June 20,1954 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Married to Rona. They have four children. He enjoys snow skiing, squash. His parents reside in Beer Sheva, Israel.

EDUCATION: Graduated from High School in 1972; bachelor of science degree in electronics and computer engineering from the University of Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1987.

SPECIAL HONORS/AWARDS: Yom Kippur War (1973); Operation Peace for Galilee (1982); F-16 1,000 Flight Hours (1992).

EXPERIENCE: In 1974, Ramon graduated as a fighter pilot from the Israel Air Force (IAF) Flight School. From 1974-1976 he participated in A-4 Basic Training and Operations. 1976-1980 was spent in Mirage III-C training and operations. In 1980, as one of the IAF's establishment team of the first F-16 Squadron in Israel, he attended the F-16 Training Course at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. From 1981-1983, he served as the Deputy Squadron Commander B, F-16 Squadron. From 1983-1987, he attended the University of Tel Aviv. From 1988-1990, he served as Deputy Squadron Commander A, F-4 Phantom Squadron. During 1990, he attended the Squadron Commanders Course. From 1990-1992, he served as Squadron Commander, F-16 Squadron. From 1992-1994, he was Head of the Aircraft Branch in the Operations Requirement Department. In 1994, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel and assigned as Head of the Department of Operational Requirement for Weapon Development and Acquisition. He stayed at this post until 1998.

Colonel Ramon has accumulated over 3,000 flight hours on the A-4, Mirage III-C, and F-4, and over 1,000 flight hours on the F-16.

NASA EXPERIENCE: In 1997, Colonel Ramon was selected as a Payload Specialist. He is designated to train as prime for a Space Shuttle mission with a payload that includes a multispectral camera for recording desert aerosol. In July 1998, he reported for training at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. He is currently assigned to STS-107 scheduled to launch in 2003.