- Year
- 1968
- By
- Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, United States Senate
- Section
- Apollo · Mission reports & chronologies
- Shelf
- Box 5
- Catalog
- Catalog F · NASA Missions
Senate Report No. 956, 90th Congress, 2nd Session, “with Additional Views,” ordered printed January 30 1968 under Chairman Clinton P. Anderson.
Reviews the January 27 1967 plugs-out test fire aboard Apollo Command Module 012 at Complex 34, Kennedy Space Center, that killed Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee. The preface states that “no single person bears all of the responsibility” for the accident and pays tribute to the three astronauts.
The introduction traces NASA Administrator James E. Webb’s same-day formation of the Apollo 204 Review Board, chaired by Dr. Floyd L. Thompson of Langley Research Center with seven additional members drawn from NASA, the Air Force, and the Bureau of Mines, and the Senate committee’s own concurrent review, undertaken with the agreement of ranking minority member Margaret Chase Smith.
The report covers seven areas of committee inquiry and concludes that the Review Board’s investigation, submitted April 9 1967 with a final appendix that November, was “exhaustive and thorough” and its findings objective. North American Aviation, prime contractor for the Command and Service Module, is referred to throughout by its new name, North American Rockwell Corporation, adopted September 22 1967.
