Temperature on the launch pad that morning was 36 degrees. The O-ring was known to be sensitive to cold and could only work properly above 53 degrees. In Challenger’s case, the O-ring got so cold it hadn’t expanded properly and allowed the leak. When he pulled it out, it kept its twisted shape, showing its lack of resilience to cold. He twisted a small O-ring in a vice, then dipped it in a glass of ice water. Richard Feynman demonstrated what this meant at a press conference five months later. If exposed to near-freezing temperatures, the O-ring lost its elasticity. It was just one of many known “potentially catastrophic” elements of the space shuttle, sensitive to a number of factors-including extreme cold. The source of the leak, as America soon learned, was traced to a tiny rubber part called an O-ring, which formed the seal between sections of the solid rocket boosters. The two liquids mixed and exploded, destroying the orbiter with it. That flame eventually burned through the shuttle’s external tank, rupturing the liquid-hydrogen tank milliseconds before the right booster crashed into the liquid-oxygen tank. The solid rocket boosters couldn’t be shut down, and there was no abort option while they were firing. That flame grew alarmingly rapidly and was forced towards the big orange fuel tank by the slipstream as the shuttle rose ever higher.ĭata on the ground confirmed it was a leak in the booster, but no one could do anything about it. Video of the shuttle’s flight showed that the smoke disappeared, only to be replaced by a flame 66 seconds after launch. Pictures of the shuttle on the launch pad showed a puff of black smoke issuing from the bottom of the right solid rocket booster. What they found was a very different launch than the one people had watched on TV. Rogers-the so-called Rogers Commission-went through every piece of data to identify the disaster’s root cause. 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. Challenger Needed to Rekindle America's Romance With Spaceīy January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight.
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