Astronauts Day is an American holiday, dedicated to

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

astronauts and their achievements. It is a "floating" holiday, observed on the last Friday of January.

Overview

This date was chosen to commemorate a number of space-related disasters which took place around this time, including the 27 January 1967 deaths of Command Pilot

Virgil Grissom Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967) was an American engineer, pilot in the United States Air Force, and member of the Mercury Seven selected by NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) as Project M ...

, Senior Pilot Edward Higgins White, and Pilot

Roger Chaffee Roger Bruce Chaffee (; February 15, 1935 – January 27, 1967) was an American naval officer, aviator and aeronautical engineer who was a NASA astronaut in the Apollo program. Chaffee was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he became an Eag ...

aboard

Apollo I Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was intended to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbita ...

, and disasters involving the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' on 28 January 1986, and the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' on 1 February 2003. Observants of this holiday are asked to light a candle in their window, reflect on the sacrifices astronauts have made, and re-dedicate themselves to a personal dream or goal of their own, a reference to a quote from

Alan Shepard Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he beca ...

. While stuck in his suit for hours during a space mission, enduring technical delays, his patience gave out and he said "Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle!"

References

{{NASA space program January observances NASA Observances in the United States Science commemorations Space advocacy

Overview

See also

References