spacetoday.net: Colorado mountain peak named after Columbia

Posted: Wed, Jun 11, 2003, 11:08 AM ET (1508 GMT)
STS-107 patch (NASA)

The US Department of the Interior has renamed a mountain peak in Colorado in memory of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew. Columbia Point is a 4,260-meter (13,980-foot) peak on the east side of Kit Carson Mountain south-southwest of Denver. The peak was officially renamed during a ceremony at the Interior Department offices on Tuesday afternoon, with NASA officials as well as the parents of Columbia astronaut David Brown in attendance. The peak is less than a kilometer from Challenger Point, another peak that was renamed after the shuttle Challenger accident. The suggestion for naming a mountain peak after Columbia came from astronaut Scott Parazynski, a Colorado native and mountaineer.