Days Of Tragedy

This is a tough period for NASA each year. Yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that claimed three astronauts. Nineteen years later, seven lives were lost-- remarkably. the first astronauts to die during a mission-- when Challenger exploded. On February 1, 2003, seven more were lost when Columbia broke apart during re-entry.

It's still the case that no astronaut-- likely no human-- has ever been lost while actually in space. Given the extreme danger of spaceflight, that record speaks volumes about the abilities of the engineers who design manned spacecraft, the workers who build them, and the astronauts and controllers who fly the missions.