Payload specialist: The colonel in Israel’s air force was the first Israeli in space. His mother and grandmother survived Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in WW2. The fighter pilot served for nearly three decades, seeing combat in the 1973 Arab
-Israeli war and the 1982 conflict with Lebanon, before being selected as Israel’s first astronaut in 1997.
He moved to Houston in 1998 to train for shuttle flight, leaving his wife and four children behind in Tel Aviv.
RICK HUSBAND, 45Mission commander: The Air Force colonel from Amarillo, Texas was selected as an astronaut in 1994 on his fourth attempt.
Being an astronaut was his childhood fantasy. "It’s been pretty much a lifelong dream and just a thrill to be able to get to actually live it out," he said in an interview before Columbia was launched. He has two children.
This mission was his second space flight.
WILLIAM McCOOL, 41Pilot: The Navy commander from Lubbock, Texas, graduated second in his 1983 class at the Naval Academy, and then went on to test pilot school and became an astronaut in 1996. This was the first space flight for the father of three.
MICHAEL ANDERSON, 43Payload commander: Anderson was flying for the Air Force when NASA chose him in 1994 as one of only a handful of black astronauts.
He travelled to Russia’s Mir space station in 1998. The lieutenant colonel, from Spokane, Washington, was in charge of the dozens of science experiments that were carried out aboard Columbia.
KALPANA CHAWLA, 41Flight engineer: The astronaut emigrated to the United States from India in the 1980s and entered astronaut training in 1994. On her only other space flight, in 1996, she made mistakes that sent a science satellite tumbling out of control. Other astronauts had to go on a spacewalk to capture it.
DAVID BROWN, 46Mission specialist: The Navy captain, pilot and doctor joined the Navy after a medical internship and flew combat jets before becoming an astronaut in 1996. Columbia’s mission was his first space flight.
LAUREL CLARK, 41Mission specialist: The astronaut began her career in the Navy as a medical officer on board submarines before becoming a flight surgeon. She became an astronaut in 1996 and was on board Columbia to help with the science experiments. Clark, from Racine, Wisconsin, has an eight-year-old son.
