Space Shuttle Challenger

Shuttle Orbiter Challenger (NASA Designation: OV-99) was a Space Shuttle orbiter. Challenger was the second shuttle orbiter to be placed into service (after Columbia) and was constructed using a body frame (STA-099) that had initially been produced for use as a test article. Its maiden voyage was on April 4, 1983, and made eight subsequent round trips to low earth orbit before it was catastrophically destroyed on its tenth mission.

Table of contents

1 Destruction
2 Flights
3 Flight Log
4 Related articles
5 External links

Destruction

Challenger was destroyed, and its seven-member crew killed, during the launch of mission 51-L on January 28, 1986. An O-ring seal on the right solid rocket booster, or SRB, began leaking, spraying hot gases onto its attachment point to the main fuel tank and causing structural failure 73 seconds after lift-off. The booster rocket broke free and slammed into the external fuel tank, rupturing it. The shuttle stack was then ripped apart by aerodynamic forces, and the external tank's fuel ignited into a fireball. Although there is some small evidence that some members of the crew may have survived the Shuttle's initial breakup, cabin pressurization was lost and at the altitude where the breakup took place all crewmembers would have lost consciousness from lack of oxygen before the free-falling crew cabin struck the Atlantic Ocean. On March 9, 1986, United States Navy divers found the largely intact but heavily damaged crew compartment with the bodies of all seven crew members inside.

Mission 51-L was notable as being the first of a proposed series of "Teacher in Space" missions. Teacher Christa McAuliffe was to have hosted a series of live teaching demonstrations aboard the orbiting shuttle. Schoolchildren worldwide watched the ill-fated launch live on television.

The crew of mission 51-L was

Following the destruction of Challenger, a long period of internal and external investigation took place. Most notable of these was the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, which issued a comprehensive 225-page report, known as the Rogers Commission Report, documenting the technical and managerial factors that contributed to the accident. The board's technical analysis implicated the SRB O-Rings which failed as a result of inadequate inspection and low temperatures. Other key findings of the Rogers Commission were that the Shuttle had not been rated to fly in the temperatures of the launch but that that technical concern had been overriden by NASA management, and the SRB O-rings had been found to be unexpectedly eroded in previous inspections, but that that finding had been largely ignored or minimized.

The investigation and corrective actions following the Challenger accident caused a long hiatus in shuttle launches: the next mission was not until September 29, 1988, when Discovery set off on mission STS-26. Reforms to NASA procedures were enacted which attempted to preclude another occurrence of such an accident, and the Shuttle program would continue without serious incident until the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003.

Flights

Date Designation 1983 April 4 STS-6 1983 June 18 STS-7 1983 August 30 STS-8 1984 February 3 STS-41-B 1984 April 6 STS-41-C 1984 October 5 STS-41-G 1985 April 29 STS-51-B 1985 July 29 STS-51-F 1985 October 30 STS-61-A 1986 January 28 STS-51-L

Flight Log

10 flights
987 orbits
69 days in space

Public domain picture from NASA

Richard Feynman who worked on the commission investigating the explosion
Space Shuttle
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Space Shuttle Columbia
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