Jonathan H. Ward's Blog

It’s been far too long since Mike and I last checked in, for which we apologize!

I’m writing this from the airport terminal at Newark after a whirlwind weekend in the New York City area. Mike and I spoke on Saturday at the Northeast Astronomy Forum, the annual shindig thrown by the Rockland Astronomy Club. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The exhibit hall in the field house was filled with an eye-watering (wrong expression) display of telescopes and accessories that told me that I haven’t...

It’s hard to believe that it is less than two months since Bringing Columbia Home was “officially” released. The book’s momentum continues to be very strong, as evidenced by both sales data as well as the feedback we’re receiving from readers.

We learned this week that the book is going into its third printing! Pre-orders were so strong that the second print run was ordered before the book even officially went on sale in January. Sales stats show that it’s selling well all over the country, n...

Wow, what a rush! I can’t believe how energizing—and exhausting—the past four weeks on the road have been! And that was on top of the month spent preparing for the book’s rollout.

You may have heard that marketing a book is harder work than writing a book. I will tell you from first-hand experience that it’s true.

Recall that Mike and I met in St. Augustine, Florida on December 18 and 19, where we signed 350 books and mailed more than 200 of them to people who had placed pre-orders. The other...

Mike and I were invited to speak at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on February 12. While I always feel honored to speak to groups, this venue held a special place in my heart. I worked as a volunteer tour guide at the NASM back in the summers of 1971 and 1972, while I was a student in high school. I can’t tell you how excited I was to be back again in the capacity of a subject matter expert!

We began our Washington, DC weekend with a signing at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-...

What a whirlwind this past week has been!

Mike and I finished the final events (*so far) of the Texas portion of our book tour this week.

We drove back from Hemphill on Friday morning, to be greeted by a Texas-sized traffic slowdown on I-10 near Baytown as we rushed to reach our noon appointment at Johnson Space Center. We were only a few minutes late meeting Lori Wheaton of JSC External Affairs who whisked us away to the Sonny Carter neutral buoyancy lab north of JSC.

[image error]The size of the facilit...

I’m at a loss to describe what an incredibly powerful day we had in Hemphill, Texas, on this the fifteenth anniversary of the Columbia accident.

We spent Wednesday night at the Fin and Feather Resort on the Toledo Bend Reservoir six miles south of Hemphill. (This was the base for Navy salvage operations during the Columbia recovery.) The Sabine County Memorial Committee threw a nice Texas-style party for us in the resort’s convention center that evening.

Thursday morning began at a 7:45 servi...

Today I’m sharing the last of the three videos I produced in January as a tribute to the final crew of Columbia.

Bringing Columbia Home: STS-107 Recovery, Reconstruction, and Return to Flight: This eight and one-half minute video centers on rarely-seen EPA and NASA footage of the debris recovery operations in East Texas, activities inside the reconstruction hangar at Kennedy Space Center, and America’s return to manned spaceflight in the STS-114 mission of July 2006. The melancholy mood of th...

Today’s offering in our reflection on the fifteenth anniversary of the STS-107 accident is a music video tribute to the crew.

A Tribute to the Crew of Columbia: Sixteen Minutes from Home: Set to an original song by Kyle Breese, this video helps us reconcile our grief at the loss of the crew of STS-107 with the knowledge that the crew was doing what they loved best. We see footage of the crew enjoying themselves during their flight preparations and mission. At the end, the song reassures us th...

This month I assembled three videos to memorialize the crew of STS-107 and to recognize the sacrifices of those who fought so hard to bring Columbia home and prepare the shuttle fleet to fly again. These videos were first shown publicly at the “Columbia: Lessons and Legends of Recovery” event at Kennedy Space Center on January 26.

I understand that versions of these videos may be officially shared later on, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to see them this week as we reflect on the cr...

On January 26, 2018 I had the distinct honor of being one of several guests in a panel discussions entitled, “Columbia—Lessons and Legends of Recovery.” The panel was produced by Michael “Chach” Ciannilli, head of NASA’s Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program, and it was held in Kennedy Space Center’s Training Auditorium. Several hundred people attended; indeed, it was standing room only!

Chach opened the meeting with a vivid visual image of how the thousands of volunteers and wor...