Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut

After almost drowning when the hatch malfunctioned on his Mercury flight, Grissom resurrected his reputation through determination and his careful work with the space agency's Gemini program. The Hoosier astronaut made such a mark on the program that fellow astronauts nicknamed the Gemini spacecraft the Gusmobile. Grissom continued to be the astronaut NASA turned to when testing new spacecraft for the Apollo moon program. On January 27, 1967, Grissom, along with crew members Ed White and Roger Chaffee, died when a fire swept through their Apollo command module during a supposedly safe test on the ground at Cape Kennedy's Launch Complex 34. The astronaut's story continues after his death, however, most recently with the discovery and raising of the Liberty Bell 7 from its resting place on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.