Observing the 50th year since the Apollo 1 launchpad fire, NASA on Friday paid tribute to the three astronauts who died in the incident.
For the first time ever, NASA has put for public display, the hatch from the burnt spacecraft that prevented the astronauts from escaping the fire during a pre-launch test.
NASA astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were killed in the thick smoke due to the fire in the Apollo 1 capsule on Jan. 27, 1967. They were unable to open the sealed three-part hatch of the capsule.
Rescue teams reached the launchpad but the smoke hindered their efforts and it was too late to save the astronauts. The fire broke out during a routine countdown rehearsal at the launch pad, located at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station involving full-scale simulation.
“Had that accident occurred in space, we’d have never known exactly what had happened,” said former Gemini and Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford.
The exhibition named ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera – A 
Rough Road Leads to the Stars,’ is set at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. It is a tribute to the astronauts and serves as a reminder of the risks of spaceflight. It also displays clothing, tools, and models that define the astronauts.
“It’s really important that we come together and we don’t forget who they were and what they
sacrificed. Even more important we remember that we don’t ever want to have it happen again,” said Kennedy Space Center director and former shuttle astronaut Bob Cabana.
“We got to the moon not in spite of Apollo 1, but because of Apollo 1,” added Cabana. “Generations of people around the world will learn who these brave astronauts were and how their legacies live on through the Apollo successes and beyond.”
Meanwhile, Buzz Aldrin posted a tweet saying, ‘Today is the 50th Anniversary of the #apollo1 fire. We didn’t only lose fellow astronauts. We lost friends. #EdWhite was my best friend.’
[…] Apollo 1: This mission of NASA was the first manned mission to moon. This mission, unlike other missions, ended long before it could even start. On 27 January 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were sitting atop the launch-pad. It was a pre-launch test. All was well, suddenly a fire broke out and spread within seconds due to the inflammable materials in the craft. Gus Grisson was then recording his voice to test the communication, when he first mentioned about the fire. The recorded voice: […]