Challenger Disaster

Challenger Disaster (1986).On 28 January 1986, in the skies over Cape Canaveral, Florida, the space shuttle Challenger exploded seventy‐three seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board: Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnick, Dick Scobee, and Mike Smith. Although shuttle launches had become almost routine in the five years and twenty‐four trips since the first liftoff, Challenger flight STS 51‐L stood out for carrying the high‐school teacher McAuliffe. As a result, millions of Americans watched the launch and explosion live on television. The Teacher in Space program was intended to boost the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's declining budget and public interest. Instead, the disaster highlighted budget and management troubles at NASA.

President Ronald Reagan appointed former secretary of state William Rogers to head a scientific commission to investigate the explosion. The commission's report, issued two months later, traced the cause to the rubber O‐rings used to seal the joints in the shuttle's solid rocket boosters. The unusually cold weather on the morning of the launch stiffened the O‐rings, allowing fuel to leak from the boosters and ignite a deadly fireball. The Rogers Commission also discovered that NASA managers had not heeded warnings by engineers at both Morton‐Thiokol and the Rockwell Corporation on the evening of 27 January 1986, that a launch in temperatures of less than fifty degrees was likely to be hazardous. Nearly three years and $2.4 billion later, NASA relaunched the U.S. space program with its next shuttle, Discovery.

Bibliography

U.S. Senate , Rogers Commission Report, 1986.
Malcolm McConnell , Challenger: A Major Malfunction, 1987.

Sarah K.A. Pfatteicher