Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom was an American astronaut, mechanical engineer, and United States test pilot who was part of NASA’s Mercury project. He became the second American in space as well as the first member of the NASA Astronaut Corps to fly in space twice. An Indiana native, Grissom held several off-the-wall jobs before enlisting as an aviation cadet in the United States military during the World War II. When the war ended, he got married and completed his education. He re-enlisted in the United States Air Force and in 1951, officially became a fighter pilot. During the Korean War, he flew more than 100 combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with an Oak leaf cluster. Grissom later was picked as one of the seven Mercury astronauts. While his first mission, Liberty Bell 7, encountered several issues, the second one, Project Gemini was successful. Picked as one of the three astronauts for the Apollo 1 mission, he was killed along with the others in an accident which occurred during a pre-launch test for the mission at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The US government conferred on him the Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously.