This is a week of sad anniversaries.

• 1/27/1967 – Apollo 1 lost (Crew of 3 – Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee)
• 1/28/1986 – Challenger lost (Crew of 7 – Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe). Reagan postponed his State of the Union address in 1986 to speak in memory of the crew, dubbed the “Challenger 7.”
• 2/1/2003 – Columbia lost (Crew of 7 – Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Ilan Ramon). A range of hills on Mars near Gusev Crater is named after the crew, and was later explored by the rover Spirit.
• The other three space missions which ended in loss of life were in April 1967 (Soyuz 1 – Vladimir Komarov), June 1969 (Soyuz 11 – Viktor Patsayev, Georgi Dobrovolsky, and Vladislav Volkov), and November 1967 (the X-15 – Michael Adams).

Diagram of “Significant Incidents”

I know this diagram is complex, but start with the bright yellow boxes – and go from there, although depressing there’s quite a lot if intriguing information packed in here.

I visited the Astronaut Memorial at Kennedy Space Center two years ago, and I hope they never have to add another name to it.

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If the links to the image don’t work – use this one. Or the source.

~ A l i c e !

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