On August 25th, 1966, an Apollo Command Module was launched aboard a Saturn IB rocket in mission AS-202. This mission was intended to immediately precede the ill-fated Apollo 1 mission, the AS-202 ...

Though NASA expected their complicated machines would not always work right, the first deaths in the space program still came as a shock -- because the fatal mishap occurred on the ground.

With the help of ground control, the astronauts refashioned the CO2 canisters in the command module to function in the lunar module.