Offnominal

While watching the today’s (Flight Day 3) highlights from STS-115, I saw astronauts Tanner and Piper closing the hatch to the ISS’s Quest Airlock where they will be “camping out”, purging the nitrogen from their bloodstreams. As Piper pulled the airlock hatch down, the following image struck me as poignant…

While most would know the STS-107 (Columbia) crew, fewer would know the memorial next to theirs, a photo and a pair of wings beneath - those of Dr. Patricia Hilliard Robertson, who died in a private plane accident in 2001. She was a member of the 1998 astronaut class, and never made it into the black. Don’t know who was responsible, but I personally found it very appropriate to put these memorials on the gateway allowing humans to get closest to the heavens…