NASA’s Deadly Accidents: The History of the Disasters that Killed 17 Astronauts

As Apollo 11’s name suggests, there were actually a number of Apollo missions that came before, many of which included testing the rockets and different orbital and lunar modules in orbit. In fact, it wasn’t until Apollo 8 that a manned vehicle was sent towards the Moon and back, and before that mission, the most famous Apollo mission was Apollo 1, albeit for all the wrong reasons. There were no delusions regarding the dangers of manned space travel, but they were brought home on January 27, 1967, when all three astronauts were killed by a fire that ignited in the cabin during a launch rehearsal. To this day, there is still debate over what ignited the fire, but the disaster made clear that the modules being used by NASA had a series of fatal flaws. 

In the decades after the Apollo program, American Space Shuttles flew over 130 missions and successfully completed over 98% of them, but unfortunately, the two most famous missions were the ones that ended tragically aboard the Challenger and Columbia. 

The notorious date of the Challenger disaster was commemorated by the crew of the Columbia while they were in space in 2003, and a few days later, on February 1, the Columbia was due to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 09:16. At 08:59, 17 minutes before it was scheduled to land, Columbia was passing over Texas 37 miles above the ground and reentering the atmosphere. Mission Control was discussing a landing gear tire pressure issue with Mission Commander Rick Husband when radio transmission from the shuttle abruptly ceased. Within hours, it would become clear that Columbia had disintegrated over Central Texas, scattering debris and the remains of the seven people aboard over thousands of square miles of east Texas and southern Louisiana.