| >A Journey Through Space< | |
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Although space shuttle missions have failed only two times out of one hundred and thirteen launches there are still many dangers. First, in January of 1967, 3 men died aboard the spacecraft Apollo 1, named Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffe and Edmund White. They all died in a fire during a simulated lift-off because there was too much oxygen in the shuttle's atmosphere, which caused them to burn up along with the ship. The fire caused them to delay their mission and redesign the Apollo craft. April of the same year, Victor Komaruv, a cosmonaut (a Russian astronaut) died when the parachute on his ship failed to deploy when landing and plummeted to the ground. In 1971, three cosmonauts died as their shuttle came back into the earth's atmosphere from outer space. The men on Apollo 1 set the record on being in space for 24 days but died a tragic death from a accidental depressurization in the space shuttle cabin. Colombia was a recent disaster in space travel. The tragic deaths of our astronauts leave NASA in mourning. After months of research NASA found out that it was an accidental heat shield error. This costly mistake took away the lives of 7 astronauts and brought sorrow into the homes of their families. The ship broke up shortly before its scheduled landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Saturday, February 1, 2003. The seven astronauts included Ilan Ramon, Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair and Salton Clark.
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