ANN's Coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy was a major effort on the part of some amazing people... including our new Associate Editor, Pete Combs and Contributor Rob Milford. After a non-stop effort from early Saturday through now, we attempted to document everything we knew about what happened to seven of our own brothers and sisters as they journeyed home from an amazing adventure.

It was brutal, emotional work. We work a lot with astronauts and other vital NASA staffers... the men and women of NASA are often dear friends, and at the very least, valued acquaintances--so this all hit very close to home. We offer our condolences to them all and add our sincere admiration for what they do every day on behalf of all mankind.

We've separated tonight's newsletter into two separate editions... one devoted to all our coverage of the STS-107 tragedy (starting with our latest stories and progressing to our first report), and the other to the rest of our normal DAILY coverage of aviation and aerospace news. I hope you will find this weekend's coverage helpful, as well as further evidence of ANN's immense commitment to being the single most comprehensive and valued source of aviation and aerospace news available to aviators everywhere.

--J.R Campbell, ANN Editor-In-Chief