Roger Bruce Chaffee (/ˈtʃæfiː/; February 15, 1935 – January 27, 1967) was an American naval officer, aviator and aeronautical engineer who was a NASA astronaut in the Apollo program.

He graduated from Central High School in 1953, and accepted a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship.

He transferred to Purdue University in 1954, continuing his involvement in Phi Kappa Sigma serving as chapter president in 1956 and obtaining his private pilot's license.

After graduating from Purdue in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering, Chaffee completed his Navy training and was commissioned as an ensign.

His time in this unit included taking crucial photos of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, earning him the Air Medal.

In 1967, he died in a fire along with fellow astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Ed White during a pre-launch test for the mission at what was then the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34, Florida.

[3] In January 1935, in their hometown of Greenville, Michigan, his father was diagnosed with scarlet fever, so his mother moved in with her parents in Grand Rapids, where Roger was born.

The family spent the next seven years in Greenville before moving to Grand Rapids, where his father took a job as the chief Army Ordnance inspector at the Doehler-Jarvis plant.

To apply those talents, he transferred to Purdue University in the autumn of 1954 to attend the school's well-known aeronautical engineering program.

[4] After starting classes at Purdue, Chaffee sought out a job to complement his coursework and involvement in the Phi Kappa Sigma social fraternity.

He temporarily worked at the base until October 1957, when he attended flight school at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.

[15] He was posted to Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas, from August 1958 to February 1959 as a part of Advanced Training Unit 212.

Chaffee received a variety of assignments and participated in multiple training duties over the next several years, spending most of his time in photo reconnaissance squadrons.

[20] Between April 4, 1960, and October 25, 1962, including during the critical time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Chaffee flew 82 missions over Cuba, sometimes up to three per day, and achieved over 100 flight hours each month.

[4][25] After his naval tour was over, and he had racked up over 1,800 hours of flying time, the Navy offered him the opportunity to continue work on his master's degree.

[4] The second phase was contingency training, which focused on astronauts learning the skills required to survive if the landing did not occur where planned.

Lizards and snakes were the main source of food, and the astronauts used their parachutes as makeshift tents for shelter for the two days of desert training.

[29] Later that year, he was CAPCOM, along with Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Eugene Cernan, for the Gemini 4 mission,[28] in which Ed White performed the first spacewalk by an American.

[10] During this time, along with Grissom, he also flew chase planes at an altitude of between 30,000 and 50,000 feet (9,100 and 15,200 m) to take motion pictures of the launch of an uncrewed Saturn 1B rocket.

[4] Later in April, the crew traveled to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to study stars that were programmed into their flight computer.

They also performed egress tests, where capsule simulators were dropped in the Gulf of Mexico under various conditions and the crew had to exit the spacecraft.

[35] Progress on pre-mission activities was nearing completion; NASA announced on Monday, January 23, that February 21 was the target launch date.

[36] On Friday, January 27, Grissom, White, and Chaffee were participating in a "plugs-out" countdown demonstration test at Cape Kennedy in preparation for the planned February 21 launch.

A momentary power surge was detected at 23:30:55 GMT (6:30 pm EST), which was believed to accompany an electrical short in equipment located on the lower left side of the cabin, the presumed ignition source for the fire.

[48] Shortly after the AS-204 fire in 1967, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight George Mueller announced the mission would be officially designated as Apollo 1.

The astronauts' spacesuits, originally made of nylon, were changed to beta cloth, a non-flammable, highly melt-resistant fabric woven from fiberglass and coated with Teflon.

There were other changes, including replacing flammable cabin materials with self-extinguishing ones, and covering plumbing and wiring with protective insulation.

[68] The dismantled Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral bears two memorial plaques: They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier.

[81] On the television show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a fictional 24th century spacecraft was named after him, designed by Doug Drexler.

[84] Star Trek and NASA have a long history of collaborations going back to the late 1960s when the television show made its debut.