In the days leading up to January 28, 2026, it is tempting to compress remembrance into a single moment.

A date observed. A statement made. A lesson summarized.

That has never felt sufficient.

Some events are not meant to be recalled once a year and set aside. They demand time, attention, and repetition. Not because they are unresolved, but because they are enduring.

Forty years after Challenger, the facts are unchanged. What continues to change is the context in which we choose to remember them. The pace of work. The tools we rely on. The confidence that comes with experience and success.

I served as a Flight Dynamics Officer in NASA's Mission Control Center during the Space Shuttle era. The Challenger Accident was not an abstract lesson. It shaped how risk was discussed, how dissent was treated, and how responsibility was carried on console. Those same lessons did not stay at NASA. They followed me into a career spent leading complex projects, where the pressures are different, but the dynamics are often the same.

Over the next several days, these reflections will be offered one at a time. Not as a countdown. Not as a retrospective. But as a deliberate act of remembrance, carried forward, the way the lesson itself was meant to be.

The facts have not changed. The act of returning to them has. 

I hope you join me over the next week.