This is a site that documents the wake-up calls from the Johnson Space Center to the Columbia which are apparently all made with a song. The audio clips have the song followed by the crew response. In particular check out Blue Team, Day 5 which was Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/audio/shuttle/sts-107/html/ndxpage1.html
Flight Day 16 Blue Team STS-107 crew wake up call, Flight Day 16, Blue Team - "Silver Inches" by Enya Let's see...getting disentigrated in a space shuttle explosion, or having to listen to Enya? Tough choice...
A-Train, you sure haven't been too tactful about this whole tragedy..... here's another eerie story, printed on January 29 from The Chronicle Astronauts pause to remember Challenger colleagues Reuters News Service CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronauts aboard the shuttle Columbia and controllers on the ground observed a moment of silence at 11:39 a.m. EST Tuesday in honor of colleagues killed at that hour 17 years ago when the shuttle Challenger exploded over Cape Canaveral. Ten bells tolled on the ground, one for each of the seven astronauts killed in the Challenger explosion and the three who died aboard Apollo One in 1967 flash fire on the launch pad. In a statement to mission control, shuttle commander Rick Husband and Columbia's six other astronauts, including Israel's first astronaut, paid homage to their fallen colleagues. "They made the ultimate sacrifice giving their lives and service to their country and for all mankind," Husband said. "Their dedication and devotion to the exploration of space was an inspiration to each of us and still motivates people around the world to achieve great things in service to others." Among the astronauts who died on Challenger was New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was to be NASA's first teacher in space. NASA announced this week the start of its new Educator Astronaut program to recruit teachers for future missions. The ceremony came as Columbia was 12 days and one hour into a 16-day mission scheduled to end Saturday, that has been considered a success by both NASA and scientists, many of whom have obtained data that exceeded their expectations. Thomas Goodwin, project scientist on a study of the interplay of prostate cancer and bone cells, said Tuesday that the experiment had produced a golf-ball size piece of tumor that he called the "largest piece of tumor tissue grown in microgravity." Goodwin said tissue grown in microgravity closely resembles tumors that grow in the body, offering scientists a lifelike model for further research. Goodwin said the tissue still growing on the shuttle will be harvested live when the shuttle lands and used in experiments of gene therapy for cancer.