The end of January marks a somber time for NASA with the anniversary of the three major tragedies in the history of U.S. spaceflight.

On Jan. 27, 1967, three of the first group of NASA astronauts - Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee - died during a routine ground test of the Apollo capsule, later named Apollo 1.

The highly anticipated Jan. 28, 1986, launch of Space Shuttle Challenger, which carried the first teacher-astronaut, Christa McAuliffe, was watched live by many around the nation, including school children. But 73 seconds after takeoff, the shuttle erupted in a fireball that killed the entire crew.

Seventeen years later, tragedy struck NASA once again. On Feb. 1, 2003, following a 16-day science mission, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart upon re-entry, killing the entire crew: U.S. astronauts Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.
A gouge in the shuttle's left wing absorbed too much heat as the shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

http://www.space.com/news/080127-nas...tragedies.html