28, 1986, exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crewmembers and changing NASAs space program forever. Bob Ebeling was one of five booster rocket engineers at a NASA contractor who tried to stop the 1986 launch of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds into its flight. She would have been the first teacher to have traveled to space. The crew included Christa McAuliffe, who was a schoolteacher from Concord, New Hampshire.
There were seven crew members aboard the Challenger, all of whom died in the accident. The crew compartment ascended to an altitude of 12.3 miles (19.8 km) before free-falling into the Atlantic Ocean. The space shuttle Challenger during its 10th launch on Jan. Challenger is the name of a space shuttle that broke apart, shortly after lift-off on January 28, 1986. The two solid-rocket boosters continued flying until the NASA range safety officer destroyed them by remote control.
#Challenger space shuttle tragedy full
Hot gases bathed the hull of the cold external tank full of liquid oxygen and hydrogen until the tank ruptured.Īt 73 seconds after liftoff, at an altitude of 9 miles (14.5 kilo- meters), the shuttle was torn apart by aerodynamic forces. NASA has verified the discovery was part of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle, which broke apart shortly after lift-off in 1986, claiming the lives of seven astronauts. On February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas and Louisiana, killing all seven astronauts on board. Space Travel: Danger at Every Phase (Infographic)Īs the shuttle ascended, one of the seals on a booster rocket opened enough to allow a plume of exhaust to leak out. On the morning of the launch, the cold rubber became stiff, failing to fully seal the joint. It was just one of many known potentially catastrophic elements of the space shuttle, sensitive to a number of factorsincluding extreme cold. The O-rings were never tested in extreme cold. NASA marked the 20th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy with somber ceremonies and remembrances during its annual tribute to fallen astronauts on Thursday.
Field joints containing rubber O-ring seals were installed between each fuel segment. To make each solid-rocket booster, the Morton Thiokol factory built four hull segments filled with powdered aluminum (fuel) and ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer).Īt the launch site, the fuel segments were assembled vertically. Space Shuttle Challenger began Mission STS-51L with a launch from Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B at 11:38:00 a.m. Morton Thiokol, the builder of the solid-rocket boosters, advised NASA that they believed the O-ring seals in the solid-rocket boosters would perform adequately in the cold.
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