Remembering the fallen heroes of spaceflight

Exploring new territory is always costly.

This image, from January 31, 1971, shows sunrise from Alan Shepard’s 12 o’clock pan taken near the Lunar Module at the start of EVA-1 (moonwalk). Without the Sun glare, we can see some detail on the Cone-Crater ridge. The flag, S-Band antenna, ladder, and the LRRR (Laser Ranging Retroreflector) are all located in the west footpad. The MET (Modular Equipment Transporter) has not been deployed and is still folded up on the MESA (Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly).

We walked on the Moon, but only after great sacrifice.

First flown in 1959, the T-38 Talon has been a workhorse aircraft for training space pilots for over 60 years, although a number of training accidents in the 1960s claimed the lives of several early astronauts before humanity ever ventured to the Moon. Theodore Freeman, Charles Bassett, Elliot See, and Clifton Williams all died in training accidents using this plane from 1964–1967.

Four T-38 Talon astronaut/trainee pilots perished in the 1960s:

• Theodore Freeman,
• Charlie Basset,
• Elliot See,
• and Clifton Williams.

Ted Freeman, US Air Force Captain, was the first NASA astronaut to perish in training. A 1964 accident involving a T-38 Talon aircraft claimed his life, as it later did to three other astronauts prior to the start of the Apollo program, including the original prime crew for the Gemini 9 mission.

In 1967, the infamous Apollo 1 fire occurred.

Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee (left), Ed White (center), and Gus Grissom (right) inside the Apollo Mission Simulator (AMS) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1967. This photo, taken in January of 1967, was supposed to be in preparation for the first successful launch of the Apollo era. Instead, a fire during a subsequent test set the Apollo program back by nearly a full calendar year, killing all three astronauts over a span of just 26 seconds.

All three astronauts,

• Gus Grissom,
• Ed White,
• and Roger Chaffee,

were burned alive.

This photo shows a close-up of the interior of the Command Module, charred beyond recognition, in the aftermath of the Apollo 1 fire from January, 1967. The pure oxygen environment inside the capsule rapidly turned a spurious spark into a large fire. Grissom, White, and Chaffee all perished quickly, but gruesomely.

Later in 1967, astronauts Michael J. Adams and Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. succumbed in accidents.

Air Force Major Robert Lawrence was the first black astronaut: selected in June of 1967 to join the Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) as part of the Air Force. He was killed on Dec. 8, 1967 in an F-104 crash during a training exercise at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Neil Armstrong barely escaped death during training in 1968.

However, humanity persevered; just two years later, lunar landings were achieved.

Apollo 11 brought humans onto the surface of the Moon for the first time in 1969. Shown here is Buzz Aldrin setting up the Solar Wind experiment as part of Apollo 11, with Neil Armstrong snapping the photograph.

All 24 lunar-bound astronauts safely returned to Earth.

The Apollo 11 crew, after safely returning to Earth from their historic voyage to the Moon, are shown in the Mobile Quarantine Facility alongside then-President Nixon. All 24 astronauts who journeyed to the Moon, either orbiting or landing on it, were safely returned to Earth.

No further American space-related fatalities occurred until January 28, 1986.

Just under 1 minute into the launch of Space Shuttle Challenger, a plume of flame appeared just above the exhaust nozzle of the solid rocket booster. This breach in the motor casing was an early sign that something was wrong with Challenger, which would experience further breaches and would explode in a matter of seconds after this photo was taken.

The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger killed all 7 astronauts:

• Gregory Jarvis,
• Christa McAuliffe,
• Ronald McNair,
• Ellison Onizuka,
• Judith Resnik,
• Francis Scobee,
• and Michael Smith.

Clockwise, from top left to lower left, are 1986’s Space Shuttle Challenger crew astronauts Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Dick Scobee, and Michael Smith. All 7 astronauts perished in the Challenger shuttle disaster.

From 1986-2001, four other NASA astronauts were killed in aircraft crashes:

• Stephen Thorne,
• S. David Griggs,
• Sonny Carter,
• and Patricia Robertson.

ISS Astronauts Barbara Morgan and Tracy Caldwell pose with a photo of Patty Hilliard Robertson, a member of their astronaut class who was killed in a training accident in 2001, between them.

Finally, all of Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew perished during re-entry on February 1, 2003.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry, whose debris horrifyingly illuminated the sky some 200,000 feet over Tyler, Texas. All seven astronauts on board were killed just minutes before their expected landing.

Rest in peace to:

• Michael Anderson,
• David Brown,
• Kalpana Chawla,
• Laurel Clark,
• Rick Husband,
• William McCool,
• and Ilan Ramon.

The 7-member astronaut crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s STS-107 mission, in front of a T-38 Talon training aircraft, are standing in height order: from L-to-R, are Husband, McCool, Brown, Clark, Ramon, Anderson, and Chawla.

All future endeavors owe an unpayable debt to these fallen spaceflight heroes.

The launch of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, carrying the Orion spacecraft, occurred on November 16, 2022. The Artemis mission will bring humans to the Moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program a half-century ago.

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