In this June 1966 photo, the Apollo 1 crew practices water egress procedures with a full scale boilerplate model of the spacecraft. In the water at right are astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee (foreground). In raft near the spacecraft is astronaut Gus Grissom. NASA swimmers are in the water to assist in the practice session that took place at Ellington AFB, near the then-Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston. On Jan. 27, 1967, tragedy struck on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy during a preflight test for Apollo 204 (AS-204). The mission was to be the first crewed flight of Apollo, and was scheduled to launch Feb. 21, 1967. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee lost their lives when a fire swept through the command module on Jan. 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal.
In the spring of 1967, NASA's Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, Dr. George E. Mueller, announced that the mission originally scheduled for Grissom, White, and Chaffee would be known as Apollo 1, and said that the first Saturn V launch, scheduled for November 1967, would be known as Apollo 4. The eventual launch of AS-204 became known as the Apollo 5 mission. No missions or flights were ever designated Apollo 2 or 3.
Each January NASA pauses to honor members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery, including the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. In 2022, the Day of Remembrance will be observed on Jan. 27. This year’s NASA Day of Remembrance also marks 55 years since the Apollo 1 tragedy.
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Image Credit: NASA
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