Roger Bruce Chaffee
Awards & Honours
3
Awards Won
6
Honours
1
Records
Chaffee's honors are the kind a military aviator earns and a grateful hometown keeps alive. The Congressional Space Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously in 1978, is the highest civilian honor NASA can bestow, and only a handful of astronauts have received it. His two Air Medals bracket a career that ran from reconnaissance flights over Cuba to a seat on the first crewed Apollo mission. The Chaffee Planetarium and the Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship are the living side of that record, one reaching schoolchildren and the other funding students from his corner of Michigan every year.
Awards
Honours & Distinctions
Congressional Space Medal of Honor
Posthumous award, the highest honor NASA bestows on an astronaut.
Arlington National Cemetery burial with full military honors
Interred with full military honors following the Apollo 1 fire.
Chaffee Planetarium named in his honor
The planetarium at the Grand Rapids Public Museum carries his name and serves school groups and the public.
Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship
A renewable $7,500-a-year, four-year scholarship awarded to West Michigan students.
NASA Day of Remembrance honoree
Honored each January alongside the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia crews.
Purdue in Space honoree
Recognized among Purdue's astronauts; his papers are held in the university archives.
Records & Feats
Youngest member of the Apollo 1 crew
At 31, Chaffee was the youngest of the three astronauts assigned to the first crewed Apollo mission.