When the $4 million expansion of the Astronaut Hall of Fame opens Saturday to include Apollo and Skylab astronauts, Sheryl Chaffee Marshall will honor her father Roger Chaffee, who almost didn’t make it into the hall’s expansion. Chaffee died with Gus Grissom and Ed White in the 1967 Apollo fire during a countdown test.
In May the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation excluded him from induction into the museum’s expansion. The foundation decided that to qualify an astronaut first had to fly in space. Grissom and White had flown before but not Chaffee.
Gene Cernan–Chaffee’s former neighbor and the last moonwalker–worked with Betty Grissom, the Apollo commander’s widow, and the Chaffee family to reverse the rule. Chaffee joins 23 other Apollo-era astronauts in the hall.
