Bush leads astronaut tributes

US President George W Bush led thousands of grieving space workers and their families, friends and neighbours in a solemn farewell yesterday to the seven Columbia astronauts.

“Their mission was almost complete and we lost them so close to home,” Mr Bush said.

Bush, his head bowed in mourning, and first lady Laura Bush wiped tears as the men and women who died in the space shuttle disaster were remembered at the home of Mission Control. The shuttle broke up as it was returning to Earth on Saturday.

“America’s space programme will go on,” Bush declared in the outdoor ceremony, held beneath a clear blue sky.

“Each of these astronauts had the daring and the discipline required of their calling. Each of them knew great endeavours are inseparable from great risk, and each of them accepted those risks willingly, even joyfully, in the cause of discovery,” Bush said.

Thousands of people bunched together on lawn outside Mission Control. “All mankind is in their debt,” Bush said of the fallen astronauts as members of his audience, including Israeli ambassador Daniel Ayalon, wiped tears from their eyes. One of the astronauts was Ilan Roman, a colonel in the Israeli air force, another was Indian-born Kalpana Chawla.

The service ended with the ringing of a navy bell seven times, one for each of the deceased astronauts and a missing man formation flyover, in which four jets roared above the crowd, with one peeling away and soaring high out of sight. Held at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, the service opened with an invocation partly in Hebrew by a navy rabbi and the hymns, God of Our Fathers and Eternal Father.

Sean O’Keefe, NASA’s administrator said the bond between those who go into space and those on the ground is incredibly strong. The president and first lady were accompanied on Air Force One by Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the moon.