Today’s Houston Chronicle has an article about efforts to develop a national memorial to the shuttle Columbia accident in east Texas. There are local memorials in several communities that were in the debris footprint or otherwise involved in the recovery work, but there is no federally-funded, centralized memorial to the accident yet. Previous efforts for a study regarding such a memorial have failed in Congress. The latest effort is HR 807, a bill that authorizes the Interior Department to perform a study on the best location for such a memorial, specifically mentioning four locations but allowing other sites to be considered as well. That bill passed the House on a voice vote in March, but has yet to be taken up by the Senate.
It would be fitting that on Mars the “Columbia hills” and the individual hills that are named for each member of the crew, will become the officially recognized names. Nearby this memorial will remain for a long time:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA05009_modest.jpg