47 Fun Facts About Challenger Disaster

What did the Challenger crew's families found in 1986?

An education center was the families' living tribute, founded to carry on the crew's teaching mission, and its first site opened in Houston in 1988.

What did Challenger's right booster swing into after breaking loose?

The external tank collapsed, releasing its liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff at nearly twice the speed of sound.

What did Reagan say the Shuttle would stop launching?

Commercial satellites went to private rockets, Reagan said, so the shuttles could be kept for national-security payloads and exploration.

What was switched on for three of Challenger's crew after the breakup?

Their emergency air packs were meant for escapes on the ground, yet three were switched on after the breakup, so some of the crew survived it at least briefly.

Which company manufactured the solid rocket boosters?

Morton Thiokol set up an O-ring task force in August 1985, but its engineers complained in memos that the work was constantly delayed and short of support.

In which US state were the booster segments manufactured?

Utah-built segments traveled to Kennedy by rail in separate pieces, so each booster had to be joined on site with field joints, where the fatal leak began.

Who overruled the booster engineers who urged NASA not to launch Challenger in the cold?

Their company's managers met privately, and one was told to take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat before they approved the launch.

Who commanded Challenger on its final flight?

Dick Scobee enlisted in the Air Force in 1957 as an engine mechanic, then earned an engineering degree and became a test pilot before NASA chose him.

Which teacher flew on Challenger under the Teacher in Space Project?

Christa McAuliffe's flight led NASA to arrange classroom viewings of the launch, and that night President Reagan spoke directly to the schoolchildren who had watched.

The teacher chosen for Challenger taught social studies at a high school in which state capital?

Concord, New Hampshire was her base; after teaching lessons from orbit, she was to return to share the flight with students.

That night, President Reagan said Challenger's crew had 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to touch what?

The face of God closed the speech; just before it, Reagan likened the crew's dedication to that of explorer Sir Francis Drake, who died aboard ship on that date centuries earlier.

Which space telescope did Challenger's loss delay until 1990?

Hubble stayed grounded with the shuttle fleet, and its engineers used the delay to run extra tests and make improvements before launch.

Which comet was Challenger's final crew scheduled to observe?

Halley's Comet was the target of Spartan Halley, a small satellite the crew was to release and later retrieve after it studied the comet near the Sun.

Bad weather at a transatlantic abort landing site in which region delayed Challenger's launch in January 1986?

West Africa was home to the site, Dakar in Senegal; the backup, Casablanca, could not handle night landings, so liftoff moved to the morning.

What halted Challenger's countdown on January 27, 1986?

A stuck bolt on the hatch handle had to be cleared first, and by then crosswinds at the Kennedy runway were too strong for an emergency return, so launch slipped a day.

In 2022, divers filming a Bermuda Triangle series found a large piece of Challenger while searching for what?

A World War II plane was their target, but square heat-shield tiles on the find pointed to a shuttle, and NASA confirmed from the video that it came from Challenger.

Which NASA center, responsible for Challenger's boosters, did the presidential commission fault for poor management?

Marshall, in Huntsville, Alabama, ran the booster program, yet the engineers' cold-weather warnings from the night before never reached top shuttle officials.

Told not to launch in the cold, NASA's Lawrence Mulloy asked if he should wait until what?

Next April, he asked, because the engineers advised against launching below 53 °F, the temperature of the coldest previous Shuttle launch.

After Allan McDonald's company demoted him, what did a congressional resolution threaten?

Barring its NASA contracts was the threat, so the company relented, promoted McDonald and put him in charge of redesigning the booster joints.

What happened to Challenger's boosters after the breakup?

Destroyed by radio signal about 110 seconds after launch, because both boosters had survived the fireball and were still flying out of control.

Why was Challenger's launch held an extra hour on the morning of January 28?

To let ice on the pad melt, because the orbiter's builder feared that ice shaken loose at liftoff could damage the shuttle's heat-shield tiles.

What did Roger Boisjoly, who warned against launching Challenger, spend nearly three decades doing afterward?

Lecturing engineering students on ethics took him to schools around the world, even though some colleagues had ostracized him after the disaster.

Which member of Congress flew on the Shuttle mission just before Challenger's last, then led NASA decades later?

Bill Nelson's own flight slipped from December to January, and that delay helped push back Challenger's launch in January 1986.

What briefly plugged Challenger's leaking booster joint at liftoff?

Burned propellant residue, molten aluminum oxide, sealed the gap, but about 58 seconds in, wind shear likely broke it and flame burned through the joint.

What were Challenger's last words on the air-to-ground loop?

'Roger, go at throttle up' came seconds before the breakup, but the recovered cabin tape later showed the pilot saying 'Uh-oh' in the final instant.

Which speechwriter drafted President Reagan's address to the nation on the night of the Challenger disaster?

Peggy Noonan borrowed its closing lines from 'High Flight', a 1941 sonnet by John Magee, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot.

Why did NASA's commentator say only 'Obviously a major malfunction'?

No confirmed explosion yet: he did not know for sure what had happened, so he waited for flight controllers to report that the vehicle had exploded.

What hung from the lone parachute seen on TV drifting down after Challenger broke apart?

A booster's nose cap hung from it, though at first it looked like a sign of hope and was taken for a paramedic searching for survivors.

Which network carried Challenger's launch and explosion live nationally?

CNN was alone among national networks in airing it live, because shuttle launches had come to seem so routine that the big broadcast networks skipped them.

Where were the unidentified remains of Challenger's crew buried in May 1986?

Arlington National Cemetery buried them together almost four months on, because recovering the crew from the ocean floor had taken weeks of searching.

Which NASA rover's landing site on Mars was named the Challenger Memorial Station in 2004?

Opportunity, designed to last 90 Martian days, kept exploring from that site for almost 15 years.

Where is most recovered Challenger wreckage buried?

Missile silos at Cape Canaveral hold most of it, but the sea still gives pieces back: two fragments washed ashore in 1996.

Which speech did President Reagan postpone the night of the Challenger disaster?

The State of the Union was put off after advisers urged a tribute to the crew instead.

Who chaired the presidential commission on the Challenger disaster?

William P. Rogers, a former Secretary of State, led a panel that called Challenger 'an accident rooted in history', since NASA engineers had flagged the joint design as early as 1977.

Which Apollo astronaut served as vice chairman of the Challenger commission?

Neil Armstrong had done this work before, as a member of the board that investigated the oxygen tank explosion aboard Apollo 13 in 1970.

How did Richard Feynman demonstrate the O-ring problem at a televised hearing?

Rubber in a glass of ice water stayed squashed, and Feynman tried it after General Kutyna, a fellow commissioner, hinted by asking him what cold does to O-rings.

Feynman's Challenger appendix said reality must beat public relations, because what cannot be fooled?

Nature cannot be fooled, he wrote, after finding that NASA officials put the odds of losing a Shuttle near 1 in 100,000 while working engineers guessed about 1 in 100.

Why did Sally Ride hide her O-ring tip?

Protecting her and insiders who could have been fired, Ride slipped the cold-weather data to General Kutyna, and it reached the public through Feynman.

After the coldest earlier Shuttle launch, what had blown past a booster seal?

Hot gas and soot got past the primary seal, and engineer Roger Boisjoly soon warned of a catastrophe of the highest order.

Which orbiter was built to replace Challenger?

Endeavour caught a stranded communications satellite on its very first mission in 1992, when three spacewalkers grabbed it by hand after a capture bar failed.

What did the Shuttle's 1988 return to flight deploy?

A NASA relay satellite, the third of its kind, went up after 32 months without Shuttle flights; the second had been lost aboard Challenger.

What set the 1988 return-to-flight Shuttle crew apart?

Space veterans all, they were the first such crew since Apollo 11, and the day before landing each paid tribute to Challenger's lost crew.

Who trained as Challenger's backup teacher and flew in space in 2007?

Barbara Morgan returned to teaching in Idaho, was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998, and from orbit in 2007 she answered schoolchildren's questions.

What escape option did NASA add after Challenger?

A bail-out pole in gliding flight lets astronauts slide clear of the wing, which model tests showed they would otherwise hit, though it could not have saved Challenger's crew.

Challenger began life as a test vehicle shaken for 11 months to mimic what?

An entire shuttle flight, from liftoff to landing, was simulated, and turning it into a spaceship then meant strengthening its wings and fitting a real crew cabin.

Challenger was named after a British ship that led which 1870s undertaking?

A global marine research expedition, HMS Challenger's 1872–76 voyage, sounded the ocean's deepest part, which was named the Challenger Deep after the ship.

Ronald McNair planned to record a solo in orbit for a Jean-Michel Jarre album on which instrument?

Saxophone was his instrument as a performing jazz musician, and after the disaster Jarre dedicated the album's final track, 'Ron's Piece', to him and the crew.