Today, January 28th, marks NASA’s annual Day of Remembrance. Today, we remember the crews of Apollo 1, Columbia, and Challenger. Today marks an especially somber occurrence as we mark the 40th anniversary of the most visible disaster in the history of spaceflight, the Challenger explosion. Originally broadcast to thousands of classrooms around the country, if not the world, millions of people watched as the crew of 7 were lost in a fireball just 73 seconds after launch. 

We here at Max-Q further wish to remember all who died in the pursuit of spaceflight.

Cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko, killed in a fire during a hyperbaric oxygen chamber test

The scheduled crew of Gemini 9, Elliot See and Chris Basset, killed in an aircraft crash months before their flight as a result of poor visibility

Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, the sole crewman of Soyuz 1, killed when his parachute failed during recovery

The crew of Soyuz 11, cosmonauts Goergy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov, killed when their spacecraft depressurized before re-entry

Astronaut Theodore Freeman, killed after a bird strike mortally wounded his T-38 on approach to Ellington AFB

The crew of Apollo 1, astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, killed as a result of an electrical fire in a pad test

Cosmonaut Sergei Vozovikov, killed during a training accident in the Black Sea

The final crew of Challenger, STS-51-L, killed 40 years ago today due to a compounded seal failure in their port-side SRB: Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe.

The final crew of Columbia, STS-107, killed when their spacecraft disintegrated during re-entry due to a foam strike: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon.

Test pilot Michael Alsbury, killed when the VSS Enterprise disintegrated during powered flight over the California deserts due to premature deployment of the feathering system.

We also remember the 1960 Nedelin catastrophe, when an unmanned rocket exploded on the pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome during fueling and killed 120 personnel, including SAF Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin.

The Space Mirror Memorial at Cape Canaveral is designed to show the names of all American astronauts, both NASA and private, with a brilliant light shining through the blackness of space. Photo by JohnOwen848 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86429211

All other images courtesy of NASA or Roscosmos.

We will never forget them or the sacrifices they made to further the exploration of space. We also pray for the safety of all crews currently in space, as well as the future crew of Artemis II.