The Apollo 1 fire kills three astronauts

What happened

On 27 January 1967, astronauts Virgil 'Gus' Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died when a fire swept through their Apollo command module during a launch pad test at Cape Kennedy. The test was a 'plugs-out' rehearsal, meant to check whether the spacecraft could run on internal power alone; because neither the rocket nor the capsule held fuel or cryogenics and its pyrotechnics were disabled, engineers had classified the test as non-hazardous. The capsule's atmosphere was pure oxygen at higher than normal pressure, and a spark, later traced to frayed wiring near Grissom's seat, ignited flammable material inside the sealed cabin. The crew could not escape in time; a NASA investigation board led by Langley Research Center director Floyd Thompson later found the primary cause of death was cardiac arrest from carbon monoxide, with the astronauts' suits and oxygen lines melted by the fire.

How we know

NASA's own mission page for Apollo 1 documents the test conditions and crew; a separate NASA history office account of the fire specifies the investigation board and its findings on causes and consequences for later Apollo hardware.

Sources

• NASA. Apollo 1 · Primary source (author-declared)nasa.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• NASA History Office. NASA Apollo Mission Apollo-1 (Apollo 204) · Primary source (author-declared)nasa.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)