Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the
sky over Tyler, Texas.

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia brook up while
entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew
members on board.

The Columbia‘s 28th space mission, designated STS-107, was
originally scheduled to launch on January 11, 2001, but was
delayed numerous times for a variety of reasons over nearly
two years. Columbia finally launched on January 16, 2003, with
a crew of seven. Eighty seconds into the launch, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the shuttle’s propellant tank and hit the
edge of the shuttle’s left wing.

The Space Shuttle Columbia crew, left to right. Front row:
Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool. Back row: David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. (AP file)

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia on the day of launch.

Accident investigators reconstructed space shuttle Columbia from recovered debris.

Private Eddie Slovik is the only American military serviceman
executed for desertion (during World War II) since the American
Civil War.

In August of 1944, as he and a companion were on the way to the
front lines, they became lost in the chaos of battle and stumbled
upon a Canadian unit that took them in.

When he returned to his unit in October, he signed a confession
of desertion, claiming he would run away again if forced to fight,
and submitted it to an officer of the 28th. The officer advised
Slovik to take the confession back, as the consequences were
serious. Slovik refused and was confined to the stockade.

Eisenhower upheld the death sentence and Slovik was shot and
killed by a 12-man firing squad in eastern France.

Wedding photo, 1942.

The Execution of Private Slovik is a made-
for-TV movie starring Martin Sheen, it
premiered March 13, 1974 on NBC.

The U.S. State Department angrily accused the Soviet Union of
shooting down an unarmed American jet that strayed into East
German airspace. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were
killed in the incident. The Soviets responded with charges that
the flight was a “gross provocation,” and the incident was an
ugly reminder of  the heightened East-West tensions of the Cold
War-era.

The occupants of the aircraft were Lieutenant Colonel Gerald K. Hannaford, Captain Donald Grant Millard and Captain John F.
Lorraine.

According to the U.S. military, the jet was on a training flight over
West Germany and pilots became disoriented by a violent storm
that led the plane to veer nearly 100 miles off course.

Memorial at the crash site near Vogelsberg.

North American T-39A Sabre Liner USAF.

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19S "Farmer" at the National
Museum of the United States Air Force.

SANDY KOZEL

(AP)

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle
Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and
Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first
ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a
37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New
Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place
among the seven-member crew of the Challenger.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground,
including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the
shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire.

The crew of the Challenger space shuttle. Front row,
from left to right, shows astronauts Mike Smith, Dick
Scobee, Ron McNair and in the rear row, from left to
right, are Ellison Onizuka, school teacher Christa
McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. (NASA) 

A launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral,
Florida, killed astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II,
and Roger B. Chaffee.

The astronauts, the first Americans to die in a spacecraft, had
been participating in a simulation of the Apollo 1 launch that 
was scheduled for the following month.

The Apollo 1 prime crewmembers intended for the first
manned Apollo space flight: (L to R) Edward H. White II,
Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee.