NASA Day Of Remembrance For Fallen Astronauts Is Today

NASA has been running its space program for decades. While there have been some major successes in the space program from putting a man on the moon to creating the ISS, there have been some major disasters as well. NASA has named today the Day of Remembrance for the fallen astronauts.

This week marked the anniversary of three different NASA accidents that led to the death of crewmembers. The first was the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 that killed crew during ground testing. The other anniversary is the Challenger disaster from 1986.

The third anniversary this week is of the Columbia shuttle disaster from 2003. The Apollo 1 tragedy claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee on January 27, 1967. The Challenger broke apart during lift off on January 28, 1986, 19 years and one day after the Apollo 1 tragedy.

The Columbia explosion happened on February 1, 2003. That tragedy has been 11 years ago already and was caused by damage to the heat shield on the spacecraft killing all on board. It's hard to believe that despite being years and years apart all three of these major tragedies happened in the same week.

SOURCE: Space.com