In the months that followed the accident, a Presidential Commission led by former Secretary of State William P. ![]() Wreckage from the Challenger being studied in the Logistics Facility at Kennedy Space Center Cold Temperatures Caused a Tiny O-Ring to Malfunction Will these billionaire dreamers avoid the mistakes of the past? Whoever participates in the next space wave can learn a lot from Challenger’s ill-fated flight. ![]() We’re now in a new era where private companies, eyeing Mars, are starting to shift the spaceflight spotlight away from government efforts. Challenger not only taught America a lesson about faulty O-rings and hubris it forever changed our relationship with spaceflight and our tax-funded space agency. More than three decades later, the image of that explosion remains as iconic as Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon. For the first time in its history, NASA had lost a crew on a mission-with the nation watching. And images of the grotesque, Y-shaped explosion dominated the news cycle for days to come. Teachers scrambled to get their kids out to recess. Challenger disappeared as white vapor bloomed from the external tank. The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lift off.īut 73 seconds after Challenger’s launch, that dream quickly became a nightmare. The 'Space for Everyone' Dream Shattered That Morning Kids nationwide would watch the launch live and know that no dream was beyond reach. As a civilian, she was PR catnip: infinitely relatable and proof that space was now truly open to average Americans, not just hot-shot fighter jocks. The sun had been up for less than an hour and air temperatures were a few notches above freezing when the crew of STS-51L boarded the orbiter Challenger that Tuesday morning.Īll around the country people were getting excited-in large part because the seven-person crew’s included Payload Specialist Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher and mother of two chosen to fly as part of NASA’s Teacher in Space program. The launch on January 28, 1986, was different. For many Americans, shuttle flights carried little of the bravado and romance of the Apollo era. Missions-to conduct research, repair satellites, and build the International Space Station-failed to ignite popular imaginations the way a moon landing had. Projected frequency: more than 50 flights a year.īut had space flight become…too routine? Even as the shuttle undertook fewer than one-tenth that many flights, excitement quickly waned. The government agency had debuted the space shuttle program five years earlier with an aggressive public-relations message that the reusable vehicles would make access to space both affordable and routine. NASA managers were aware of these design problems but also failed to take action.Īfter the accident, NASA refrained from sending astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of the shuttle’s features.Challenger Needed to Rekindle America's Romance With Spaceīy January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight. The commission also found that Morton Thiokol, the company that designed the solid rocket boosters, had ignored warnings about potential issues. Flames then broke out of the booster and damaged the external fuel tank, causing the spacecraft to explode and disintegrate. The investigation revealed that the O-ring seal on Challenger’s solid rocket booster, which had become brittle in the cold temperatures, failed. Shortly after the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger. ![]() Seventy-three seconds later the shuttle broke up in a plume of smoke and fire. These warnings went unheeded, and at 11:39 a.m. On the morning of the launch engineers warned that certain components-particularly the rubber O-rings were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures. The mission’s launch from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was delayed for six days due to weather and technical problems. The tragedy prompted NASA to temporarily suspend all shuttle missions. It was later determined that two rubber O-rings, which had been designed to separate the sections of the rocket booster, had failed due to cold temperatures on the morning of the launch. The NASA space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after lift-off.
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