NASA and its astronauts were excited to launch the first mission of the moon-facing Apollo program in 1967, but tragic events intervened, as a new Channel 4 documentary, Apollo 1: Destination Moon, explains.

Apollo 1 was scheduled to carry veteran NASA astronauts Gus Grissom and Ed White, and rookie agency astronaut Roger Chaffee, to Earth orbit to test out the technologies that would help future astronauts land on the moon. It was ru d that Grissom would even command one of the first moon-landing missions. But everything changed on Jan. 27, 1967. A fire erupted in the spacecraft during an Apollo 1 launch test at what is now called Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida. It is believed that a spark, accelerated by a pure oxygen environment and flammable materials, ignited. The astronauts quickly fell unconscious, then died.