Families mark Columbia’s loss

In an emotional ceremony a few miles from where Columbia should have landed five years ago, NASA officials, astronauts, schoolchildren and family members of the lost shuttle crew gathered at the Kennedy Space Center to remember the seven who died while returning from space.

Evelyn Husband-Thompson compared the sunrise to the one she saw on the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, when she awaited the homecoming of Columbia and her husband, Rick, its commander.

Columbia never made it back from its science mission. Its wing gashed by a chunk of fuel tank foam insulation at liftoff 16 days earlier, the spaceship shattered high above Texas just minutes from home.