January 27, 1967....Exactly 40 years ago.....

Today marks the 40th anniversary for the crew of the Apollo 1 mission. On January 27th, 1967, astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, (the second American astronaut to fly into space), astronaut Edward H. White II (the first American astronaut to "walk" in space), and astronaut Roger B. Chaffee (a "rookie" astronaut on his first space mission)entered the capsule located on Pad 34 to start a simulation of the countdown sequence. Due to a spark caused by a short in a ciruit and the pure oxygen in the capsule, a fire broke out and quickly spread through the cabin. The last transmission ended within 17 seconds and the crew died from smoke inhalation and suffered severe burns.

Since we first started putting humans into space, there have been accidents, lessons learned, and we have suffered the losses of brave astronauts. Let us remember what they lived for and believed in, the improvements this space program has made, and the successes we have had in space exploration.