High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Roger Bruce Chaffee (February 15, 1935 – January 27, 1967), Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy, was a Naval Aviator, aeronautical engineer and a NASA astronaut in the Apollo program. Chaffee died along with fellow astronauts Gus Grissom and Ed White during a pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at the then-Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida, in 1967. Chaffee was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Navy Air Medal.