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- The morning of January 28 was unusually cold, and engineers warned their superiors that certain components—particularly the rubber O-rings that sealed the joints of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters—were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures. However, these warnings went unheeded, and at 11:39 a.m. Challenger lifted off.
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Sep 9, 2024 · The Challenger disaster was the explosion of the U.S. space shuttle shortly after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 28, 1986. All seven astronauts on board died.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The most prominent victim of the Challenger disaster was Christa McAuliffe, a teacher whose role was to conduct at least two lessons from orbit. Ot...
- The immediate cause of the Challenger disaster was the failure of two rubber O-rings to seal a joint between the two lower segments of the right-ha...
On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC).
- Challenger Needed to Rekindle America's Romance with Space
- The 'Space For Everyone' Dream Shattered That Morning
- Cold Temperatures Caused A Tiny O-Ring to Malfunction
- Info Relayed to Decision Makers Was Incomplete and Misleading
- NASA Should Have Delayed The Launch, But PR Concerns Won Out
- Spaceflight After Challenger
By January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight. It was, in part, NASA’s own fault. 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. Projected frequency: more than 50 flights a ye...
But 73 seconds after Challenger’s launch, that dream quickly became a nightmare. Challenger disappeared as white vapor bloomed from the external tank. Spectators were stunned. Teachers scrambled to get their kids out to recess. And images of the grotesque, Y-shaped explosion dominated the news cycle for days to come. For the first time in its histo...
In the months that followed the accident, a Presidential Commission led by former Secretary of State William P. Rogers—the so-called Rogers Commission—went through every piece of data to identify the disaster’s root cause. What they found was a very different launch than the one people had watched on TV. Pictures of the shuttle on the launch pad sh...
To find an answer, the Rogers Commission interviewed engineers and decision-makers at both NASA and Morton Thiokol, the company that built the solid rocket boosters. What it found was a stunning lack of communication—almost as if officials had been playing a game of broken telephone, with the result that incomplete and misleading information reache...
The space shuttle was the realization of NASA’s long-standing goal of reusability. Touted as the program that would truly open space for human exploration, it promised to turn spaceflight into something akin to air travel. Orbiters would be refurbished between missions to keep the overall program cost down and number of missions per year up. But fi...
It was nearly three years before NASA launched another shuttle mission. In the interim, a handful of changes were recommended—some technical, but most focusing on repairing the damaged communications pathways, management culture and safety organization at NASA. America’s relationship with spaceflight would be harder to fix. Challenger was the begin...
- 2 min
Feb 15, 2010 · The NASA space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, a disaster that claimed the lives of all seven astronauts aboard.
Feb 1, 2022 · Space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, changing NASA's space program forever
- 3 min
- Elizabeth Howell
Nov 24, 2009 · The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after takeoff, killing all the astronauts on board. The tragedy unfolded on live TV with millions watching.
Jan 28, 2016 · On 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after taking off. A space scientist recalls how it transformed Nasa’s plans to explore beyond Earth.
