Space Mirror Memorial

Space Mirror Memorial
National Register of Historic Places
National Memorial
	Space mirror
location	Merritt Island in Florida (USA)
Coordinates	28 ° 31 '30.8 " N , 80 ° 40' 53.8" W Coordinates: 28 ° 31 '30.8 " N , 80 ° 40' 53.8" W.
Built	1991
The NRHP added

The Space Mirror Memorial , also known as the Astronaut Memorial , is a memorial located on the grounds of the visitor area of the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island . It is maintained by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation , whose offices are located in the NASA Center for Space Education, next to the visitor area. Inaugurated in 1991, the memorial is intended to commemorate the lives of women and men who died in the United States' space programs, particularly NASA . The Space Mirror Memorial was promoted to National Memorial by Congress .

In addition to the 20 astronauts who died in the service of NASA, the memorial also contains the names of an X-15 test pilot and another US Air Force officer who died during a test flight, a civilian who died in the Challenger disaster, and an Israeli one Astronaut killed in the Columbia disaster .

Components of the monument

Names of STS-107 crew members on the adjacent granite wall

The main component of the monument is the Space Mirror, a large mirror made of black granite that is divided into 90 smaller fields. The names of the 24 deceased astronauts are scattered on the mirror, with the names of those who died together in the same or adjacent field. The names have been cut through the full thickness of the mirror and filled in with translucent acrylic . Through a combination of reflected sunlight and spotlights, the letters glow and appear to float in a reflection of the sky.

Near the Space Mirror is a granite wall with pictures and short biographies of the people listed on the mirror.

The design of the Space Mirror was the result of an international design competition won by the architecture firm Holt Hinshaw Pfau and Jones.

Financing the monument

The Astronauts Memorial Foundation and the Space Mirror Memorial are funded in part by special license plates issued by the State of Florida . The license plate called Challenger Plate was first issued in 1987 and was the first and most popular special license plate issued by the state. The third edition, introduced in 2004, contained the name of Columbia in the text, but is still called the Challenger Plate . The monument cost 6.2 million US dollars .

Disused sun tracking

The monument was equipped with motors so that it could follow the course of the sun. Parabolic mirrors on the back directed the light onto the names of the deceased, who were thus brilliantly illuminated. Additional headlights were used when the sun wasn't enough.

In 1997 the system failed, with a steel beam hitting the adjacent platform. Insurance paid $ 375,000 for the repair. Due to further problems with the rotating ring, the mechanism later came to a standstill again.

With an estimated repair cost of $ 700,000, the Astronauts Memorial Foundation decided to invest the money better in educational programs. The headlights have been adjusted differently and are now on 24 hours a day.

Dear people

This memorial is restricted to persons killed during or training for a United States-funded space mission. For a detailed listing of space disasters, see List of Space Disasters .

The people honored with the monument are:

Theodore Freeman , one of the 1963 recruits of Astronaut Group 3 , died in a training accident with a Northrop T-38 on October 31, 1964.

Elliot See and Charles Bassett were killed in a T-38 accident on February 28, 1966 when their plane crashed into McDonnell Building 101 on a foggy day. They were originally intended to be the crew of Gemini 9 . Bassett was another Group 3 recruit, while See was a 1962 Astronaut Group 2 recruit .

Virgil Grissom , Edward White and Roger Bruce Chaffee made a plug-out test in the Apollo 1 capsule on January 27, 1967 , in which a short circuit ignited combustible material in the capsule filled with pure oxygen. The astronauts died of carbon monoxide poisoning before the ground crew could reach them. Grissom, one of the astronauts on the Mercury program , had flown twice before. White led the first U.S. spacecraft mission aboard the Gemini 4 . Chaffee, a freshman, was a Group 3 recruit.

Clifton Williams died in a T-38 training accident on October 5, 1967. He was another Group 3 recruit and would have been part of the Apollo 12 crew as part of the astronaut rotation in the Apollo project . A fourth star on the official badge of the Apollo 12 mission also commemorates him. Alan Bean , who took Williams 'place on Apollo 12, is believed to have left Williams' astronaut badge on the moon to mark his loss.

Michael J. Adams died in an X-15 crash on November 15, 1967. He was not a NASA astronaut, but earned his astronaut badge as part of the X-15 program. It was also part of the United States Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program .
Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. died on December 8, 1967 while co-piloting an F-104 . The student pilot he instructed had touched down too hard on landing. Due to the low height, the parachutes were ineffective. Lawrence was on the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program at the time and could have become the first African American in space.
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke up 73 seconds after the start of the STS-51-L mission . All seven crew members - Francis Richard Scobee , Michael John Smith , Ronald Erwin McNair , Gregory Bruce Jarvis , Judith Arlene Resnik , Ellison Shoji Onizuka and Christa McAuliffe - died. Scobee, McNair, Resnik and Onizuka had flown before. McAuliffe took part in the Teacher in Space project.
Sonny Carter died on April 5, 1991 in the crash of Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 . Carter traveled on behalf of NASA. He had participated in STS-33 and was training for STS-42 at the time .
On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry at the end of the STS-107 mission due to damage caused during launch. The crew consisted of Rick Douglas Husband , William Cameron McCool , David McDowell Brown , Kalpana Chawla , Michael Philip Anderson , Laurel Blair Salton Clark and Ilan Ramon . Husband, Chawla, and Anderson were veterans. Ilan Ramon was a pilot in the Israeli Air Force .