NASA SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLOSION 1986 FULL
NASA SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLOSION 1986 SERIES

Though declared operational by President Regan (mostly as a formality), those in the industry would agree that it was anything but.

Because of this, there was ever-mounting pressure to cut down on delays and launch them as fast as possible. But by 1986, try as it might, it still hadn’t lived up to its promises. The shuttle was promised to be low-cost with a high number of flights when it was sold to Congress to approve its development funding. The pressure to avoid that situation, coupled with pressure from upper management at NASA to reduce delays and increase an already high launch cadence, was the second factor. Should one or both of the sessions fall on the weekend, it would have been a PR problem for NASA.

NASA SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLOSION 1986 FULL

The sessions were planned to happen in the first two full days of the mission. The scheduling of the classroom sessions was the first in a number of factors working against Challenger. (Full, official NASA biographies can be found here.) Problems the shuttle faced McAuliffe’s role on the mission was to hold live teaching sessions from space that would be sent to classrooms across the country. She held a Bachelor of Arts degree from Framingham State College and a Master’s degree in Education from Bowie State College. PS-2 was the aforementioned Christa McAuliffe. The Challenger Crew Commander Dick Scobee And though the vast majority of attention was on Christa McAuliffe, the country and the world got to know the rest of the crew as well. Viewing parties were being planned from coast to coast. News agencies big and small were constantly talking about the launch. Out of thousands that applied, and after a lengthy selection process, McAuliffe was selected, along with her backup, Barbara Morgan (who, notably, went on to be selected as an astronaut in 1998 through the normal selection process and flew on STS-118).Īs the late-January launch date approached, the media attention grew to a fever pitch. It was part of a larger effort to show that, maybe, the average person was ready to go to space. Her selection was the result of the “Teacher in Space” program, a NASA program to select someone to teach actual lessons from space. That was the result of the selection of Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire, to fly on board. Where most shuttle launches at this point were going unnoticed because of how routine they had become, this mission drew a large amount of attention.

After the mid-air explosion, the spacecraft debris fell into the Atlantic Ocean, just off Florida’s coast. Unfortunately, 73 seconds after launch, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and broke apart, leading to the deaths of all seven crew members.

NASA SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLOSION 1986 SERIES

The mission’s main goals were to deploy the second in a series of tracking and data relay satellites and observe Halley’s Comet. The mission was designated STS-51-L and was the 25th mission of the United States’ Space Shuttle program.

Nasa space shuttle explosion 1986