Wernher von Braun  was a German born rocket scientist, engineer, space architect,
and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany  
and the United States during and after World War ll. A former member of the Nazi  
Party and a commissioned SS officer, von Braun would later be regarded as the 
preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century in his role with the U.S. civilian
space agency NASA. In 1955, ten years after entering this country, Von Braun
became a naturalized citizen. He lead the development of the Saturn V booster
rocket that helped land the first men on the Moon in 1969. Von Braun received the
National Medal of Science in 1975. He died on June 16, 1977 of pancreatic cancer 
at the age of 65. 

Space Shuttle Challenger  was NASA’s second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia being the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, on January 28, 1986, resulting in the death of all seven crew members. The break up was ultimately due to the failure of an O-ring on its right solid-fuel rocket booster (SRB). The failure was due to a variety of factors, including unusually low temperatures prior to liftoff.

The accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet. The  missions resumed in 1988 with the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery.

    
                                                 The Challenger crew

   
                                                

             Challenger memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia

Today marks the day of the sixth and final lunar
landing mission of the NASA Apollo program.

The crew of Apollo 17 was, left to right, Commander
Eugene A. Schmitt, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison H.
Cernan, and Command Module Pilot Ronald E.
Evans (seated).

Schmitt took this picture of Cernan posing with the
American flag on the moon’s surface.