NASA Day of Remembrance

The previous day at NASA was dedicated to the people who lost their lives while helping humanity reach frontiers that had once seemed to belong only to myth and dreams. The accompanying collection commemorates them.

Apollo 1

The crew of the first Apollo mission, preparing for the journey toward the Moon, died on January 27, 1967 during a ground test when a fire swept through the spacecraft cabin. The article attributes the rapid fire to flammable materials inside the spacecraft together with the pure-oxygen environment. The disaster led NASA to make major changes to the design of the Apollo command module.

Virgil Grissom, Edward White, Roger Chaffee :Apollo-1 

The Story of Humans and Rings

When Galileo observed Saturn through his telescope in 1610, he described what looked like two arms or two very large moons on either side of the planet. In a letter to the Duke of Tuscany he wrote, in essence, that Saturn was not alone but had two companions extremely close to it, apparently touching it, although Saturn itself was much larger.

Two years later, Saturn had moved to a point in its orbit where, from Earth's viewing angle, Galileo could no longer see the rings edge-on. Doubting his own eyes and thoroughly confused, he concluded that “Saturn has swallowed his two children,” connecting what he saw with the Roman myth of Saturn destroying his children for fear of being overthrown. Two years later, as Saturn's geometry changed again, Galileo once more saw the mysterious structures through his small telescope and was more puzzled than ever.