More than half a century ago, the first astronauts set to fly in the Apollo era died tragically in a fire while performing a command module test ahead of the planned Saturn 1B rocket launch.

Theirs is just one of the tragedies in the endeavor of human spaceflight that NASA centers across the country marked during the annual Day of Remembrance held on the last Thursday of each January. 

This year happened to coincide with the day that the world lost astronauts Edward White, Virgil “Gus” Grissom and Roger Chaffee on January 27, 1967.

“The thought never goes away — the same feelings I had on that particular day,” said Lowell Grissom, Gus’ brother.

Grissom was one of a handful of family members who gathered alongside friends and guests at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Thursday to mark the solemn day. 

He was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the time of the tragedy and said his father called him to share the horrible news.

“You just don’t know what to do or where to go — it’s total confusion and sadness,” Grissom said. “And this, while I feel honored to be able to do this, it still brings back some of those sad memories as well.”

Also in attendance at the KSCV ceremony was Sheryl Chaffee, Roger’s daughter. She was only 8 years old when her father died, and didn’t understand the magnitude of the Apollo program until she was older. 

“When you have a traumatic event like that when you’re very young, you kind of don’t, or at least I didn’t, really want to think about it,” Chaffee said. “I didn’t want to pay attention to it — I didn’t, until I was much older.”

As circumstances would have it, Chaffee ended up following in her father’s footsteps in a way and worked for NASA for 33 years before retiring five years ago. She also became involved with the Astronauts Memorial Foundation and currently serves as its chair.

“Probably all of that in some weird way — working for NASA and doing this work with the foundation — has been a great healing process for me,” Chaffee said. “I was just talking to Kathie Scobee (Fulgham) earlier and we were saying how, you know, it’s not quite so sad anymore. It’s more hopeful and we’re celebrating their lives and we’re not so much remembering the loss.”

From one Moon shot to the next

Thursday was not only a day that marked the loss of the crews from Apollo 1, Challenger STS-51-L and Columbia STS-107, but it was also a meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP).

The gravity of the day was not lost on the committee members as they discussed future human spaceflight.

“It’s important to look to the past, to the lessons that we’ve paid such high prices for, and figure out what lessons from the past can be brought forward into the future and adapted to the new environments that we find ourselves operating in,” said Dr. Sandra Magnus, a panel member and former astronaut who flew three Space Shuttle missions.

She said the Organizational Cause Statement of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report still carries weight today:

“The organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the Space Shuttle Program’s history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the Shuttle Program, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterizations of the Shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision. Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety and reliability were allowed to develop, including: reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices (such as testing to understand why systems were not performing in accordance with requirements/specifications); organizational barriers which prevented effective communication of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organization’s rules.”

“Considering an initiative as complex as Artemis, with a multitude of commercial and international providers, a clear process for shared understanding of the risks, priorities and focus will be critical to success,” said Dr. Patricia Sanders, the chair of ASAP.

Dr. George Nield, another panel member and the former associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, remarked that the latest milestones for the Artemis I mission included a countdown sequence test inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), which was performed on Dec. 20.

“The test was mostly successful, but ended prematurely at T-33 seconds instead of T-29 seconds, which was the plan,” Nield said. “And based on that, a second test was run on Jan. 24.”

He said they are continuing to investigate why the countdown ended seconds earlier than anticipated. 

Another key component of the Artemis program is the Human Landing System, which is being overseen at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Following the unsuccessful protest by Blue Origin, Nield said SpaceX has continued to develop Starship. The company, based in Hawthorne, Calif., gave their updated milestones to NASA in December and provided the space agency an integrated master schedule this month.

Nield said so far, five of those milestones have been completed “and are being positively assessed.”

“NASA also conducted some site visits to Boca Chica and Hawthorne that indicated there’s been significant progress in the overall production of the Starship, and HLS also provided NASA with a good understanding of some of the challenges that SpaceX is having with a Raptor production for the engines,” Nield said.

In a November email sent to employees, which was first reported by Space Explored, SpaceX founder Elon Musk described the production of the Raptor engines used on the Starship spacecraft as a “crisis” that was “far more severe than was reported.”z

Nield said there are a number of risks that they’ve just recently been able to share with NASA, which include:

• Cryo-fluid transfer and management of refueling
• Landing technologies: accuracy, stability of landing and hazard avoidance, including manual piloting 
• Software and hardware integration
• Flight rate
• Hardware turnaround times 
• Reuse 
• Environmental control and life support system development for a vehicle of its size

“Some of the mitigations include the fact that there will be uncrewed test landings prior to the first human landing; extensive use

Legacy of space exploration

Even though the pain of losing his brother still remains with him, Grissom said he’s proud that the space program has endured and continues to foster many important innovations.

“I think (Gus) realized all the benefits that come from exploration," Grissom said. "Just look at all of the things that have come out of the space program that we now enjoy that weren’t even thought about at the time that he was an astronaut."

NASA recently published its annual Spinoff report, which documents a number of inventions that were born from the space program and have found their way to use here on Earth.

Grissom said his brother would also be proud to see humans returning to the moon as the next giant leap toward becoming a multi-planet species. 

“I think he would be very surprised it’s taken this long," Grissom said. "But I think he’d be pleased to know that we are continuing space exploration."