What Happened to Apollos 2 and 3?

Things were looking good for NASA at the beginning of 1966. The Gemini program was halfway done and well on track to accomplish all the major program goals by the end of the year, and Apollo was in the pipeline on track to begin manned missions early in 1967. And flights in support of Apollo's lunar goal were well underway by this point.

Tests of the Saturn I rocket and flights of boilerplate Apollo Command Modules (CSM) had begun in 1961. And from the start NASA had been using a straightforward and self-evident naming scheme: a letter denoting the rocket and payload and number standing for the rocket type and launch number. There were ten Saturn I launches designated by “S” or “AS” followed by a number from 100 to 110. The 100-series numbers were reserved for the Saturn I rocket, so AS-101 would be the first Saturn I launch. Five Little Joe launched tests of the CSM were noted by "A" followed by a number from 1 to 4; the first was an unnumbered qualification flight. Getting closer to manned missions were the more advanced Saturn IB launches. These missions were designated “AS” for Apollo-Saturn followed by a number beginning with 201, the 200-series numbers were reserved for the Saturn IB rocket.


AS-109'S 1965 LAUNCH.

NASA

All launched in 1966 while Gemini was coming to a close, AS-201 on February 26 was a suborbital test of the Saturn IB with a Block I Apollo CSM as its payload, AS-203 on July 5 was another suborbital flight to test the CSM’s heat shield, and AS-202 was a test of the Saturn IB rocket. The next mission in the Saturn IB sequence, AS-204, was scheduled as the first manned mission. It was a simple but vital Earth orbital test of the Block I CSM scheduled to launch on February 21, 1967.

When NASA received the spacecraft for AS-204, spacecraft 012, at the Kennedy Space Center on August 26, 1966, it was protected by a cover emblazoned with “Apollo One” in capital letters. The mission was colloquially known as Apollo 1; the crew even had agency approval for a mission patch paying homage to the flight’s foremost position among manned missions.

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/what-happened-apollos-2-and-3

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