Apollo 1

Apollo One is the name given to the AS-204 spacecraft after it was destroyed by fire during a training exercise on January 27, 1967. Its crew were the astronauts selected for the initial Apollo program mission: Mission Commander Virgil Grissom, Command Module Pilot Edward White, and Lunar Module Pilot Roger Chaffee. The fire is believed to have been caused by a spark which produced rapid combustion in the pure oxygen atmosphere.

When North American Aviation shipped Spacecraft CM-012 to Kennedy Space Center, it bore a banner proclaiming it "Apollo One" and Grissom's crew had received approval for an "Apollo 1" patch in June 1966, but NASA was planning to call that mission "AS-204." After the fire, the astronauts' widows asked that "Apollo 1" be reserved for the flight their husbands would never make. For a time, mission planners called the next scheduled launch "Apollo 2." Suggestions were made that the flights should be called "Apollo 1" (AS-204), "Apollo 1A" (AS-201), "Apollo 2" (AS-202), and "Apollo 3" (AS-203). Finally, the NASA Project Designation Committee approved "Apollo 4" for the first (unmanned) Apollo-Saturn V mission (AS-501), but declared that there would be no retroactive renaming of AS-201, -202, or -203.

The Apollo 1 disaster forced a complete redesign of the Apollo command module.

Preceded by : Gemini 12

Apollo program

Followed by : Apollo 4