Arlington Memorial Cemetery, site of tribute to Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia astronauts. Photo Credit/Arlington National Cemetery
NASA and the larger space community will honor the 17 men and women who have perished in American spacecraft during ceremonies on Thursday at the Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington D. C.
Additional memorials are planned this week at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where the astronauts trained and launched.
Jan. 27 marks NASA’s National Day of Remembrance, an annual tribute to the three Apollo astronauts who died in a launch pad fire on Jan. 27, 1967; and the 14 shuttle astronauts who perished aboard the shuttles Challenger and Columbia on Jan. 28, 1986 and Feb. 1, 2003.
Each of the tragedies forced NASA and the nation to re-examine its exploratory pursuits, correct mistakes and press ahead with the human exploration of the moon and the eventual assembly of the International Space Station.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will lead the tributes with a wreath laying ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Thursday at 10 a.m., EST.
NASA has established a web site for the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia astronauts with biographies, photographs and historical details surrounding each of the accidents.
The Apollo 1 fire at the Kennedy Space Center claimed the lives of Virgil “Gus” Grisson, 40, one of the Mercury 7 astronauts; Ed White, 36, the first American astronaut to walk in space; and Roger Chafee, 31. Grisson and White represented the Air Force. Chafee was a Navy aviator.
Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lifting off from Kennedy. The disintegration claimed the lives of commander Francis “Dick” Scobee, 46, of the Air Force; pilot Mike Smith, 40, of the Navy; Judy Resnik, 36, a bio-medical engineer; Ellison Onizuka, 39, of the Air Force; Ron McNair, 35, a physicist; Greg Jarvis, 41, a Hughes Aircraft satellite engineer; and Christa McAullife, 37, a New Hampshire classroom teacher and NASA’s Teacher-in-Space selection.
Columbia broke apart as the spacecraft descended to Earth, just 16 minutes from an anticipated landing at Kennedy. The breakup claimed the lives of commander Rick Husband, 45, of the Air Force; pilot Willy McCool, 41, of the Navy; Mike Anderson, 43, of the Air Force; Ilan Ramon, 48, of the Israeli Air Force; Kalpana Chawla, 41 an aerospace engineer; David Brown, 46, a Navy medical doctor; and Laurel Clark, 42, a Navy medical doctor.