Challenger crew memorialized on Mars Published Jan. 28, 2004 PASADENA, Calif. (AFPN) -- Late Air Force Lt. Cols. Francis R. (Dick) Scobee and Ellison S. Onizuka are among those now memorialized on the red planet. NASA officials have named the landing site of the Mars rover Opportunity in honor of the Space Shuttle Challenger's final crew. The area in the vast flatland called Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity landed Jan. 25, will be called the Challenger Memorial Station.Colonel Scobee was the Challenger's commander and Colonel Onizuka was a mission specialist. The seven-member crew of Space Shuttle Challenger was lost when the orbiter suffered an in-flight breakup during launch Jan. 28, 1986.NASA officials selected Meridiani Planum because of extensive deposits of a mineral called crystalline hematite, which usually forms in the presence of liquid water. Scientists had hoped for a specific landing site where they could examine both the surface layer that is rich in hematite and an underlying geological feature of light-colored layered rock. The small crater in which Opportunity alighted appears to have exposures of both, with soil that could be the hematite unit and an exposed outcropping of the lighter rock layer.Challenger's 10th flight was to have been a six-day mission dedicated to research and education, as well as the deployment of the TDRS-B communications satellite. Other members of the crew were Navy Cmdr. Michael J. Smith and mission specialists Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair. The mission also carried two payload specialists, Gregory B. Jarvis and Sharon Christa McAuliffe, who was the agency's first teacher in space.Opportunity will spend the next three months exploring the region surrounding the Challenger Memorial Station to determine if Mars was ever watery and suitable to sustain life.A composite image depicting the location of the Challenger Memorial Station can be found on the Web at www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/jan-28-2004/captions/image-1.html.