Bush leads salutes to Shuttle crash victims

US President George W. Bush led thousands of grieving space workers and their families, friends, neighbours in a solemn farewell today 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 calmly told the mourners.

“For these seven, it was a dream fulfilled.”

Thousands of people bunched together on a mass of green lawn stretching more than 200 yards from the white, square-shaped building that houses 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.

Bush was meeting with family members after the service, which 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 and out of sight in the sky.

Held at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, the service opened with in invocation partly in Hebrew by a Navy rabbi and the singing of the hymns, “God of Our Fathers” and “Eternal Father.”

Sean O’Keefe, NASA’s administrator, his voice at times breaking with emotion, said the bond between those who go into space and those on the ground “is incredibly strong. Today, our grief is overwhelming.” O’Keefe said the government would honour the legacy of the fallen astronauts ”by finding out what caused the loss ... to correct the problems we find and to make sure that this never happens again.”

Navy Capt. Kent Rominger, chief of the astronaut’s office, recalled each of the crew’s personal idiosyncrasies and quirks that helped make the seven especially close.

One by one, he enumerated their strengths, recalling, for example, how Navy flight surgeon David Brown was a longtime bachelor and “as such, he was in constant search for food” – a comment that drew a ripple of laughter from the audience.

“I know you’re listening,” Rominger said, as he finished by calling the seven by name. “Please know you’re in our hearts and we will always smile when we think of you.”

The president and first lady were accompanied on Air Force One by Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the moon. Former senator and astronaut John Glenn and his wife, Annie, also were on the board along with O’Keefe and a delegation of congressional figures.

“It’s too bad we couldn’t have pushed this day back forever,” lamented Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth.

NASA estimated the crowd at between 10,000 and 15,000. Mourners spilled beyond the square and crowded around a pond to hear the presidential eulogy.