“NASA honors members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery, including the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, during the agency’s annual Day of Remembrance Thursday, 27 January 2022. This year’s NASA Day of Remembrance also marks 55 years since the Apollo 1 tragedy.”

A fire on 27 January 1967 in the Apollo 1 spacecraft occurred during a routine ground test at Pad 34 killing Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee who were in training for the first Apollo flight. Remaining at Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base is the launch stand that supported their Saturn 1B rocket on that fateful day.

A piece of wreckage from the Orbiter Challenger on display at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1986 when a seal weakened by freezing temperatures on one of the solid rocket boosters failed tragically ending STS-51L’s mission to launch a Tracking & Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) satellite along with the first Teacher in Space. Killed were Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, Teacher in Space.

Wreckage from the Orbiter Columbia on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. These are the window frames from Columbia’s flight deck behind which would have sat the commander and pilot. “The seven-member crew of the STS-107 mission was just 16 minutes from landing on the morning of 1 February 2003, when Mission Control lost contact with the Orbiter Columbia. A piece of foam, falling from the external tank during launch, had opened a hole in one of the shuttle’s wings, leading to the breakup of the orbiter upon re-entry.” Killed were Commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson, Mission Specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut.

“NASA’s Day of Remembrance is an opportunity to honor members of the NASA family who lost their lives in our shared endeavor to advance exploration and discovery for the good of all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Every day, we have an opportunity to further uplift the legacies of those who gave their lives in pursuit of discovery by taking the next giant leap, meeting every challenge head-on, as they did. In doing so, we also must never forget the lessons learned from each tragedy, and embrace our core value of safety.”

Quotes from NASA press releases.