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Roger Chaffee
Astronaut
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Born: February 15, 1935
Birth Place: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Died: January 27, 1967
Cause of Death: Killed in Apollo 1 launch pad fire
Date Joined NASA: October 17, 1963
Space Flights: 0
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Roger Chaffee
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MISSION ASSIGNMENTS
- Apollo 204 (Apollo 1)
Assignment: Proposed Prime Crew
The first manned flight of the Apollo CSM, the Apollo C category mission, was
planned for the last quarter of 1966. Numerous problems with the Apollo Block I
spacecraft resulted in a flight delay to February 1967. The crew of Virgil I.
Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee, was killed in a fire while
testing their capsule on the pad on 27 January 1967, still weeks away from
launch. The designation AS-204 was used by NASA for the flight at the time; the
designation Apollo 1 was applied retroactively at the request of Grissom's
widow.
HIGHLIGHTS
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Chaffee graduated High School from Central High in Grand Rapids, Michigan in
1953. He attended Purdue University and received a BS in aeronautical
engineering in 1957. In January, 1963, he entered the Air Force Institute of
Technology to work on an MS in engineering.
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A Navy ROTC student, Chaffee went on active duty in 1957 and after training
in Florida and Texas became a pilot. In March 1960, he was assigned to the
Heavy Photographic Squadron 62 at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville,
Florida, and flew many photo-reconaissance missions over Cuba during the
October 1962 missile crisis.
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Chaffee was one of the 14 astronauts selected in October 1963. After
completing basic astronaut training, he worked on deep space communications
and the Apollo spacecraft development. He was named to the Apollo 1 crew in
March 1966.
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Lieutenant Commander Roger Bruce Chaffee was killed in a flash fire aboard
the Apollo 1 spacecraft on January 27, 1967 at Kennedy Space Center Launch
Complex 34. Chaffee, Virgial "Gus" Grissom and Edward White were training
for a planned 16-day Apollo mission scheduled for launch on February 14,
1967. It would have been his first spaceflight. At the time of his death,
Chaffee had logged approximately 2300 hours of flying time, 2000 of those
hours in jets.
Information provided by Mark Wades Encyclopedia Astronautica
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/spaceflt.htm
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