Sadly, the Space Shuttle Challenger was not the only orbiter lost during the shuttle era. Twelve years later, on February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas while reentering Earth's atmosphere after a 16-day mission in orbit.
During it launch, a large chunk of foam broke off and struck the orbiter's left wing. The strike damaged tiles on the wing designed to protect the shuttle and her crew from the extreme heat of reentry.
During reentry, some of the tiles damaged during launch failed, sending the shuttle into an unsurvivable spin. It broke up during reentry and all crewmembers were lost.
More than 85,000 pieces of Columbia were recovered on the ground (most in Texas) during a lengthily search period, including one of the shuttle's main engines seen above.
The recovered debris was shipped to Florida, catalogued, and laid out to support the investigation. The recovered pieces constituted about 38% of the shuttle.
In 2004, more than 400 people were on hand for the dedication of the Columbia Memorial in Section 46 at Arlington National Cemetery, right next to the Challenger Memorial.
In 1996, Teacher in Space runner-up Barbara Morgan returned to NASA, this time as a full fledged astronaut and made it to space on the Endeavour as part of STS-118.
In 2018, astronauts Ricky Arnold (above) and Joe Acaba, both educators who followed in Christa McAuliffe's footsteps, first into middle and high school teaching and then into NASA, traveled to the International Space Station and performed the four experiments that Christa has spent so much time on Earth preparing for but never had the chance to give. You can see Christa's Lost Lessons, as they are called, on challenger.org.
Earlier this year, Joe Acaba (who also happens to have been the first Puerto Rican in space, became Chief of the Astronaut Office.
NASA's shuttle era came to an end on July 21, 2011, when Atlantis landed, finishing STS-135.
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