The following is a chronology of some key space incidents:

October 1960 -- Ninety-one people are killed when an R-16 rocket explodes at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union.

January 1967 -- Three U.S. astronauts -- Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Edward White -- die in a "flash fire" aboard Apollo 1 during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral.

April 1967 -- Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov is first man to die in a space mission when a parachute on his spaceship fails on re-entry and the ship crashes to Earth.

June 1971 -- Three Soviet cosmonauts die during re-entry after 24 days in an orbiting space laboratory, a record endurance flight at that time.

March 18, 1980 -- Fifty technicians die at Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome when a Vostok booster explodes while being fueled. The incident is reported only in 1989.

January 28, 1986 -- Seven U.S. astronauts including a schoolteacher die aboard the Challenger space shuttle 72 seconds after lift-off from Cape Canaveral.

April 18, 1986 -- A Titan missile believed to be carrying a military satellite explodes shortly after launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Base launch site in California.

May 3, 1986 -- A Delta rocket carrying a $57 million weather satellite explodes shortly after lift-off from Cape Canaveral.

February 22, 1990 -- Western Europe's 36th Ariane rocket, carrying two Japanese satellites, explodes less than two minutes after lift-off from Kourou, French Guiana.

September 7, 1990 -- Part of a U.S. Titan rocket falls from a crane and explodes at Edwards Air Force Base, sending flames 150 feet into the air and killing at least one person.

June 18, 1991 -- A 46-foot (15-meter) Prospector rocket carrying 10 science experiments for the U.S. space agency and several universities is destroyed after veering off course after launch from Cape Canaveral.

August 2, 1993 -- A Titan 4 rocket believed to be carrying an expensive military spy satellite explodes after lift-off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

December 1, 1994 -- Western Europe's 70th Ariane rocket crashes into the Atlantic with the $150 million PanAmsat-3 telecoms satellite after launch from Kourou, French Guiana.

January 26, 1995 -- The Chinese-designed Long March 2E rocket carrying a telecommunications satellite explodes after blast-off from Xichang in southwest Sichuan province.

October 23, 1995 -- An unmanned Conestoga rocket whose satellite contains 14 scientific experiments explodes 45 seconds after blast-off from a NASA (news - web sites) facility in Virginia.

February 15, 1996 -- A rocket carrying an Intelsat 708 communications satellite explodes soon after take-off from China's launch site in Xichang.

May 20, 1996 -- A Soyuz-U booster rocket carrying reconnaissance satellites explodes 49 seconds after lift-off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome.

June 4, 1996 -- Europe's Ariane-5 rocket explodes 40 seconds into its maiden flight after blasting off from the European Space Agency launch center in Kourou, French Guiana.

June 20, 1996 -- A Soyuz-U rocket carrying reconnaissance satellites explodes after lift-off at Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

May 20, 1997 -- A Russian Zenit-2 booster rocket carrying a Cosmos military satellite explodes 48 seconds after launch.

June 25, 1997 -- Russia's Mir space station (news - web sites) carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one American collides with a cargo ship. Crew narrowly escape death as oxygen rushes out of Mir.

August 12, 1998 -- The U.S. Titan rocket program is put on hold when a Titan 4A explodes soon after lift-off in one of history's most expensive space disasters. The cost of the rocket and its spy satellite cargo was put at more than $1 billion.

August 27, 1998 -- A Delta 3 rocket carrying a U.S. communications satellite bursts into a $225 million fireball, soon after blast-off from Cape Canaveral on its maiden flight.

September 10, 1998 -- A computer malfunction brings down a Ukrainian rocket carrying 12 commercial satellites, minutes after blast off from Baikonur.

July 5, 1999 -- A Russian Proton-K heavy booster rocket launched from Baikonur suffers a malfunction that detaches the engine and parts of the booster, causing them to crash onto the steppe. A 200-kg (440-lb) chunk falls into the courtyard of a private house. Kazakhstan briefly closes Baikonur in a row with Russia over clean-up costs and rent for the base.

September 23, 1999 -- NASA's $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft breaks up as it enters the Martian atmosphere due to confusion among its constructors between metric and old English measuring units.

October 28, 1999 -- A Russian Proton rocket carrying a communications satellite crashes shortly after take-off from Baikonur.

December 3, 1999 -- NASA's Mars Polar lander loses contact with earth after reaching the Red Planet. The $165 million mission is a write-off.

August 15, 2002 -- NASA's $159 million Contour space probe, launched on July 3 and designed to chase comets, breaks up on leaving Earth's atmosphere.

December 11, 2002 -- An upgraded European Space Agency Ariane-5 rocket explodes soon after blast-off from Kourou, French Guiana, sending two satellites worth about $600 million plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.

February 1, 2003 -- The space shuttle Columbia, carrying seven astronauts including the first from Israel, breaks up over Texas on re-entering atmosphere at end of 16-day flight.