REMEMBRANCE: Today is the anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Seven people died on Feb. 1, 2003, when the orbiter broke up during re-entry.
In fact, Tuesday was the NASA Day of Remembrance, in which the agency honors those “who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery,” according to NASA.
There are three disasters in particular that NASA is remembering. Each was in a different year, but they were close on the calendar, happening between Jan. 27 and Feb. 1.
Friday was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 tragedy.
As NASA explains, “On Jan. 27, 1967, veteran astronaut Gus Grissom, first American spacewalker Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee were sitting atop the launch pad for pre-launch test when a fire broke out in their Apollo capsule.”
Nineteen years and one day later, “on the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, a booster engine failed and caused the Shuttle Challenger to break apart, taking the lives of all seven crew members.”
To honor those killed, NASA held a wreath-laying ceremony Tuesday at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, among other NASA-organized events that day.
The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 tragedy was commemorated Thursday in the Astronauts Memorial Foundation hall at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. An official tribute to the spacecraft opened at the complex on Friday.
We’ll leave you with this quote from Gus Grissom:“If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
