Sunday 31 July, 2016  7.30pm to 9.30pm
Churchill Auditorium
Open to public upon registration

Panelists: Rona Ramon (Ramon Foundation, Chairman Board of Directors), Jonathan Clark (Baylor College of Medicine, Assistant Professor of Neurology and Space Medicine), Doug Hamilton (University of Calgary, Associate Professor, former flight Surgeon for the Canadian Space Agency), John Connolly (ISU, SSP Director, NASA Exploration Missions and Systems)

Space shuttle Columbia's STS-107 mission was a milestone for space life science, but the mission's vast accompishments were overshadowed by the mission's tragic end.  Embedded within this mission are may human stories - not only of the crew, but of the thousands of people on Earth whom the mission touched. 

This exceptional panel brings together four individuals who will share their human stories of Columbia's last mission.  Rona Ramon and Jon Clark shared the most personal connection to the mission, their spouses, Israeli Air Force officer Ilan Ramon and NASA astronaut Laurel Clark, were two of the crewmembers lost on the flight.  Doug Hamilton was a flight surgeon who worked with the crew and participated in their recovery, and John Connolly led one of the many teams who searched 3000 square kilometers of east Texas to recover the remains of shuttle itself.  The human stories of Columbia range from the seven familes of the STS-107 crew, to the mission's flight controllers, and support staff, to the 22,000 individuals would take part in the largest search and recovery in spaceflight history. 

The number of individuals touched by the loss of the seven crewmembers made the Columbia mission a truly human story.