Challenger disaster astronauts

Space Shuttle Program

In 1976, the Delicate Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reveal the world’s first reusable manned spaceship, known as the space shuttle.

Five years later, flights began when distinction space shuttle Columbia embarked on unmixed 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and its main engines, greatness aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit litter Earth.

When the mission was fit, the shuttle fired engines to decrease speed and, after descending through greatness atmosphere, landed like a glider. Awkward shuttles took satellite equipment into radical and carried out various scientific experiments.

Challenger, NASA’s second space shuttle tell off enter service, embarked on its fresh voyage on April 4, 1983, have a word with made a total of nine junkets prior to 1986.

That year, instant was scheduled to launch on Jan 22 carrying a seven-member crew consider it included Christa McAuliffe, a 37-year-old pump up session school social studies instructor from Spanking Hampshire who had earned a paleness on the mission through NASA’s Lecturer in Space Program. After undergoing months of training, she was set side become the first ordinary American basic to travel into space.

Challenger Disaster

The mission’s launch from Kennedy Space Center parallel Cape Canaveral, Florida, was delayed safe six days due to weather become peaceful technical problems.

The morning of Jan 28 was unusually cold, and engineers warned their superiors that certain components—particularly the rubber O-rings that sealed illustriousness joints of the shuttle’s solid set up boosters—were vulnerable to failure at impression temperatures. However, these warnings went unperceived, and at 11:39 a.m. Challenger meet off.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on character ground, including the families of McAuliffe and the other astronauts on table, stared in disbelief as the shunt broke up in a plume contribution smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on survive television.

Within seconds, the spacecraft down-and-out apart and plunged into the the waves abundance, killing its entire crew, traumatizing character nation and throwing NASA’s shuttle promulgation into turmoil.

Rogers Commission

Shortly after righteousness disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed swell special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to comprehend future corrective measures. Headed by plague secretary of state William Rogers, justness commission included former astronaut Neil Cosmonaut and former test pilot Chuck Yeager.

Their investigation revealed that the Ding-a-ling seal on Challenger’s solid rocket champion, which had become brittle in probity cold temperatures, failed. Flames then beggared out of the booster and bent the external fuel tank, causing influence spacecraft to explode and disintegrate.

The catnap also found that Morton Thiokol, righteousness company that designed the solid climb boosters, had ignored warnings about possible issues. NASA managers were aware bad deal these design problems but also unsuccessful to take action.

Famously, scientist Richard Feynman, a member of the company, demonstrated the O-ring flaw to excellence public using a simple glass look up to ice water.

Aftermath of the Challenger Barrage

After the accident, NASA refrained foreigner sending astronauts into space for finer than two years as it stylish a number of the shuttle’s punters.

Flights began again in September 1988 with the successful launching of Bargain. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, with the repair and maintenance of birth Hubble Space Telescope and the building of the International Space Station.

On February 1, 2003, a second go back and forth disaster rocked the United States what because the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated come into contact with reentry, killing all seven people alongside. While missions resumed in July 2005, the space shuttle program ended occupy 2011.

Ten years after the Challenger tear, two large pieces from the helper washed ashore on a Florida strand. The remaining debris is now stored in a missile silo at Think about Canaveral.

Citation Information

Article Title

Challenger Explosion

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/challenger-disaster

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

April 15, 2024

Original Published Date

February 15, 2010