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On January 28, 1986, only 73 seconds
after it lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida,
the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.
As the world watched on live television,
the ensuing fireball plummeted out of the sky
and disappeared into the ocean below.
The loss of the Challenger and its crew, Francis Dick Scobee,
Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair,
Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe stunned the nation
and became a defining moment for a generation of Americans.
Today we're going to take a look at some shocking facts
about the Challenger shuttle disaster.
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Now, let's go back to January of 1986.
Originally built in 1975 as a test vehicle
for the Space Shuttle program, the Challenger
wouldn't be transformed into an actual spacecraft until 1979.
It was first launched in 1983 for the mission
that would entail the program's first spacewalk.
That wasn't the last first the Challenger
would participate in.
It was also the shuttle that carried
the first female American astronaut, Sally Ride,
as well as the first African-American astronaut,
Guion Bluford.
The flight of the Challenger was supposed
to be historic because of one of its crew members, 37-year-old
Christa McAuliffe.
Though she was normally just a social studies teacher
from Concord High School in New Hampshire,
McAuliffe had been selected by NASA's Teacher in Space program
to be the first educator in space.
Designed to inspire children and generate publicity for NASA,
the plan called for McAuliffe to accompany the Challenger
astronauts into orbit and teach a few lessons
while they were there.
Because of McAuliffe's presence, the launch
was heavily covered by the media.
And NASA itself provided numerous schools
with a raw satellite feed.
This meant thousands of schoolchildren,
including those from McAuliffe's own class,
were watching live when the tragedy occurred.
Christa McAuliffe wasn't meant to be the only passenger
on the Challenger who would capture
the attention of children.
NASA also made efforts to get Sesame Street star, Big Bird,
on the shuttle.
They even contacted Caroll Spinney, the beloved actor
who played the giant, yellow muppet about participating
in the mission.
The plan was never approved by mission control.
But in 2015, NASA did confirm that the conversation
with Spinney and the producers of Sesame Street took place.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The pilot for the mission, which was called STS-52-L by NASA,
was Mike Smith.
It was to be the first and last spaceflight of his career.
Smith also holds the distinction of speaking
the last words recorded by any member of the Challenger crew.
Just before the explosion, the shuttle's voice recorder
captured Smith saying, uh-oh, indicating that at least one
crew member knew something was going wrong.
Pilot Mike Smith wasn't the only person
who knew something wasn't right prior to the explosion.
In fact, on the evening before the launch,
a group of engineers from a NASA contractor
called Morton Thiokol tried to convince their superiors
to delay the mission.
A meeting was held where the engineers pointed out
the launch was scheduled to take place
in colder weather than any previous shuttle launch.
This was important because the rubber O-rings, which
sealed various parts of the shuttle,
had frequently failed to perform under chilly conditions.
Sadly, the engineers were overruled by their managers.
One of those engineers, Bob Eberling,
returned from the meeting and told his wife,
it's going to blow up.
Decades later, Eberling would recall
that NASA had their minds set on going up and proving
to the world they were right.
And they knew what they were doing.
But they didn't.
For his part, Eberling would retire after the disaster.
Decades later, he told the media that his decision
to go along with the plans after being overruled
haunted him for the rest of his life.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The engineers from Morton Thiokol
were exactly right in their predictions.
The launch proceeded in below freezing temperatures.
And when the shuttle lifted off, the O-ring seal
on the right rocket booster failed.
Heated gas escaped from the rocket
and essentially vaporized the material
connecting the booster to the shuttle's tank.
This created a deadly mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen gas.
And at 46,000 feet, the combination
ignited turning the challenger's fuel tank
into a massive fireball.
Despite this, the solid fuel strap-on boosters
were unaffected and continued to carry the shuttle upwards.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
In the immediate wake of the disaster,
it was widely believed that the crew of the shuttle
had died instantly.
However, the evidence would later
suggest a far more disturbing scenario, one which
NASA had attempted to obscure.
The Miami Harold's Tropic magazine
undertook an independent investigation
of the accident which revealed that contrary to early reports,
the shuttle cabin had not depressurized in the explosion.
This means that the crew was likely alive and awake
for the entire three mile descent from the sky
to the Atlantic Ocean below.
This conclusion is backed up by the fact
that several of the astronauts had time
to manually activate their personal emergency air packs.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
While space travel is incredibly dangerous,
prior to the Challenger disaster,
NASA had never lost an astronaut in spaceflight.
In fact, the only previous fatalities
the program had experienced were the deaths
of Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee, Virgil "Gus" Grissom,
and Edward White who all perished in a fire
during a ground test on January 27, 1967.
January 28th wasn't just the day that the Challenger
was supposed to lift off.
It was also the date scheduled for President Ronald Reagan's
State of the Union Address.
However, with the disaster only six hours old,
the president opted to delay the annual speech
and instead personally update the American people
on the tragedy.
The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger
honored us with the manner in which they live their lives.
This speech would be hailed as one of Reagan's greatest,
quite a testament for a man whose nickname was "The Great
Communicator."
Thank you.
The explosion of the Challenger scattered wreckage
over a vast swath of the Atlantic Ocean.
And salvage crews would spend weeks
recovering all of the pieces.
In fact, it would take six weeks until Naval divers finally
located the resting place of the crew cabin
100 feet beneath the water, approximately 15 miles
east of Cape Canaveral.
The remains of the astronauts were recovered.
And those that could be identified
were returned to their families.
Those that couldn't were buried under a monument
at Arlington National Cemetery.
Following the disaster, investigators
determined that NASA had deliberately
violated launch rules.
Engineers had warned their superiors
that it was too cold for the mission to proceed.
And launching in such low temperatures
was against NASA's own procedures.
A former chief scientist at NASA, named Ken Iliff,
later claimed that this failure to observe the rules
was the primary cause of the accident.
So why did NASA ignore the warnings and press ahead?
There were many factors that influenced the launch decision.
But the Rogers Commission noted that in an effort
to speed launch times to meet NASA's goal of 24 missions
a year, the agency had pushed its people and systems
beyond their capabilities.
This drive to achieve more launches
was tied directly to the survival of the Space Shuttle
program as it tried to fulfill its designed intent
as a single-launch vehicle that could serve the nation's
growing commercial, scientific, and military launch
requirements.
The explosion of the Challenger made headlines
throughout the world.
And almost immediately there were calls for the entire Space
Shuttle program to be halted.
This suspension would last three years, during which time
NASA worked to implement the safety
recommendations of a presidential panel called
the Rogers Commission.
The commission, which included high profile astronauts
like Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride,
was formed to help prevent similar disasters
from happening again.
And it mostly worked.
It wouldn't be until 2003 that NASA would experience
another tragic incident.
That time it was the Space Shuttle Columbia
that burned up during reentry.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Debris from the Challenger would continue
to wash up on the coast of Florida
long after the disaster.
For example, in December of 1996,
almost 11 years after the explosion, beach-goers
at Cocoa Beach, over 20 miles away from Kennedy Space Center,
found two large pieces of the shuttle washed up in the surf.
The pieces were so big, NASA had to use a front end loader
to pick them up and move them from the beach.
The death of a civilian, Christa McAuliffe,
was especially damaging to the space program.
And the fallout would last for decades.
In fact, it would be 22 years before NASA
would send up another civilian.
Incidentally, that civilian would
be Barbara Morgan, who was Christa McAuliffe's
backup for the original Challenger mission.
Morgan, who like McAuliffe was a teacher of social studies
and English, joined the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavor
for a successful mission in 2007.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The explosion of the Challenger changed America and its space
program forever.
It would also prove to be an inspiration to artists
who would memorialize the tragedy in sculptures, songs,
and television shows.
One memorable example of this took place
at the Rendez-vous Houston concert
in 1986, where musician, John Michel Jarre,
a friend of Challenger astronaut Ronald McNair,
played a saxophone solo McNair himself intended to play
during the doomed mission.
The track would go on to be sampled in the music of Frank
Turner, Adam Young, John Denver, and even Beyoncé.
The brave, wonderful people who were aboard the Challenger
Space Shuttle.
It's called Flying For Me.
The disaster was also acknowledged
in the scripts of then popular television shows
like Punky Brewster and Star Trek The Next Generation.
We were watching the Space Shuttle take off.
It exploded.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
At the time of its destruction, the Challenger
was carrying more than astronauts
and scientific equipment.
It was also carrying a soccer ball.
Crew member Ellison Onizuka had brought with him
a soccer ball that had once been used
by his daughter, Janelle's, high school soccer team.
The soccer ball miraculously was recovered intact
from the wreckage of the shuttle.
It was returned to Onizuka's daughter who
allowed it to be put on display as a memorial at Clear Lake
High School.
Fast forward 30 years to when Shane Kimbrough,
another astronaut with a daughter who attended Clear
Lake, asked the school if he could take the ball with him
on a mission to the International Space Station.
The school obliged.
And in February of 2017, Kimbrough
tweeted an emotional photo from the International Space Station
which showed Onizuka's soccer ball floating in zero gravity.
Do you remember the Challenger disaster?
Where were you when it happened?
Let us know in the comments below.
And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos
from our Weird History.