January 28 does not mark an ending.

It marks a responsibility that has now been carried for forty years.

Challenger is often spoken of as a moment in time. A morning. A launch. A sudden rupture that divided before and after. But its true legacy was never confined to that day. It was meant to travel forward, embedded in how decisions are made when stakes are high and certainty is incomplete.

We continue because stopping was never Challenger's final lesson.

Exploration demands motion. Curiosity demands risk.

The men and women who flew Challenger understood that. Honoring them does not mean retreating from ambition. It means advancing with a clearer understanding of what ambition requires.

Today, we stand amid capabilities that would have seemed extraordinary not long ago. Systems that can analyze faster than humans. Tools that can recommend, predict, and optimize. Launches that feel routine. These are achievements worth recognizing. They are not substitutes for judgment.

When I left Mission Control and moved into leading complex projects elsewhere, I recognized the same pressures almost immediately. Different rooms, different tools, but the same forces shaping decisions when stakes are high and certainty is incomplete. Challenger followed me not as a memory, but as a responsibility.

The danger has never been that we forget what happened. The danger is that we remember it as something that could only have happened then.

Challenger reminds us that progress does not remove vulnerability. It reshapes it. That leadership does not eliminate doubt. It must make room for it. That responsibility does not belong to tools, processes, or institutions alone. It belongs to people who must decide when to proceed and when to wait.

Forty years on, remembrance is not passive. It is active. It lives in the questions we ask, the pauses we allow, and the voices we protect when pressure builds.

We move forward not by looking away from the past, but by carrying it with us, intact and unsoftened.

Eyes open. Responsibility intact.

Still going.