Honoring the 14 U.S. astronauts who gave their lives in the exploration of space, the black granite Astronauts Memorial was dedicated on May 9th at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Astronauts Memorial is located at Spaceport USA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a site visited by three million people each year.

The complicated story of the monument's design and construction required near-heroic efforts by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people, and pushed stone-working and engineering technology to the state of the art. The most difficult problems involved creating a structure that combines steel and acrylic, both having high tensile strength, with super-dense, but brittle, granite, and ensuring that the structure could maintain its integrity in the somewhat hostile sunshine of central Florida.

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A stone industry first - the world's only moving black granite memorial - was dedicated May 9th at the Kennedy Space Center in honor of the 14 U.S. astronauts who lost their lives in the course of duty. Called "Space Mirror," the Florida monument features a 42 1/2- x 50-foot (13 x 15.2 m) wall of Indian black granite, mounted in a steel frame much like a satellite-tracking dish, that follows the sun through its daily arc, and adjusts vertically as the seasons change.

Created by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation and inspired by the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986, the unique structure memorializes America's fallen astronauts by carving their names through mirror-finished stone. Movement of the monument allows the sun to reflect through the cut-out letters, giving the effect that the names are inscribed in the sky. The names appear on six of the 93 granite panels that make up the construction.

"It is a most unusual memorial," said architect Alan C. Helman, FAIA, chairman of the foundation. "And I think it is going to be a very recognizable memorial in the United States." The memorial honors T-38 training accident victims Theodore C. Freeman, Charles A. Bassett II, Elliot M. See, Jr., and Clifton C. Williams; Apollo 1 crew members Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee; and Challenger crew members Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, Gregory B. Jarvis, and S. Christa McAuliffe.

In addition to the black granite face, the memorial site incorporates the use of dark gray Indian granite pavers as a plinth to create a formal and solemn atmosphere. The 6-acre (2.4 hectare) site, of which 1 acre (0.4 hectare) comprises the memorial proper, sits at the entrance to Spaceport USA, the visitor center at the Kennedy Space Center. Potentially three million visitors will experience the monument each year, which was designed by San Francisco architects Holt Hin-shaw Pfau Jones Architecture (HHPJ). Funding for the $7.8 million project, including an endowment for maintenance, is provided by special "Challenger" automobile license tags, authorized by the Florida legislature.