This date was chosen to commemorate a number of space-related disasters which took place around this time, including the 27 January 1968 deaths of Command Pilot Virgil Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward Higgins White, and Pilot Roger Chaffee aboard Apollo I, and disasters involving the Space Shuttle "Challenger" on 28 January 1986, and the Space Shuttle "Columbia" on 1 February 2003.