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Late on the morning of January 27, 1967,
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were
sealed into Spacecraft 012 for a "full dress rehearsal"
with 100 per cent oxygen
The test was plagued with technical difficulties
from a spacecraft that had a history of problems,
repairs and more repairs. Five hours into the frustrating
process, the countdown was placed on hold at T-minus
10 minutes and scheduled to resume at 6:31 P.M.nknown to astronauts and
ground controllers,
the insulation had worn from a wire underneath
the seat of the spacecraft commander.
The wire sparked and caused the oxygen soaked
materials inside the spacecraft to explode in
a wall of flame. Hampered by a hatch that required
ninety seconds to open, the crew was unable to
escape the fire and died within seconds.
The fire that killed the Apollo 204
astronauts was caused by too little attention
to flame propagation characteristics of materials,
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Spaceas to test a new space based laboratory
named Spacelab 2. Spacelab 2 takes advantage of
the effectively weightless conditions in orbit to
carry out experiments in areas such as astronomy,
physics, life science, materials science, and
atmospheric physics. Challenger and her crew were
lost in 1986 when a booster failure resulted
in the breakup of the vehicle. Previously,
Challenger and her crews flew nine successful
Space Shuttle missions and made significant
contributions to America's scientific growth.
Francis R. Scobee (2), Commander
Michael J. Smith (1), Pilot
Judith A. Resnik (2), Mission Specialist 1
Ellison S. Onizuka (2), Mission Specialist 2
Ronald E. McNair (2), Mission Specialist 3
Gregory B. Jarvis (1), Payload Specialist 1
Sharon Christa McAuliffe (1), Payload Specialist 2 (TISP)
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On Feb. 1, 2003, Shuttle Columbia was lost
during its return to Earth.
Columbia's breakup during reentry just 16 minutes before landing on Feb 1.
with it the loss of seven family members
Crew:
Commander Rick D. Husband (second flight),
Pilot William C. McCool (first flight),
Payload Specialist Michael P. Anderson (second flight),
Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla (second flight),
Mission Specialist David M. Brown (first flight),
Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark (first flight),
Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel (first flight) |