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.

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.

Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., who
reimagined the potential of human achievement before a
worldwide audience when he walked on the moon, was
born on this day in history, Jan. 20, 1930.

"The sky is not the limit … There are footprints on the
Moon!" the explorer enthused in his 2016 book, "No
Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who
Walked on the Moon." The second person to walk on
the Moon is 94 years old today.

Aldrin saluting the Lunar Flag Assembly.

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, returned safely
to Earth after an historic six-day journey.

On December 21, Apollo 8 was launched by a three-stage Saturn
5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank
Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard.

On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around the
moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so.

From left Astronauts Borman, Anders and Lovell
after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean and
being recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.            
           

                           

THE FIRST IMAGE TAKEN BY HUMANS OF THE
WHOLE EARTH on December 22.