Challenger Disaster
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47 free Challenger Disaster trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, on the coldest morning NASA had ever flown. The cause was a rubber O-ring in a booster joint that engineers had warned about the night before, and the investigation that followed rewrote how NASA thought about risk, schedule pressure and the people who say no. These 47 questions cover the mission and its aftermath: STS-51-L's seven crew and the Teacher in Space Project that put Christa McAuliffe aboard, TDRS-B and Halley's Comet, the days of delays and the stuck bolt, the 53-degree argument on the Morton Thiokol teleconference, Allan McDonald's refusal to sign, the ice on the pad, 'go at throttle up', the Rogers Commission and its members from Neil Armstrong to Sally Ride, Richard Feynman's ice-water demonstration and Appendix F, the redesigned boosters, the replacement orbiter Endeavour, Barbara Morgan's eventual flight and the lessons the Columbia board said were never learned. The expert tier asks about the Criticality list, the two recovery ships, Ron McNair's saxophone and the flag from Troop 514. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation. The facts are kept plain; the crew are remembered by name.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the Challenger crew's families found in 1986?
An education center
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.
Q 02What did Challenger's right booster swing into after breaking loose?
External tank
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.
Q 03What did Reagan say the Shuttle would stop launching?
Commercial satellites
Commercial satellites went to private rockets, Reagan said, so the shuttles could be kept for national-security payloads and exploration.
Q 04What was switched on for three of Challenger's crew after the breakup?
Their emergency air packs
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.
Q 05Which company manufactured the solid rocket boosters?
Morton Thiokol
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.
Q 06In which US state were the booster segments manufactured?
Utah
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.
Q 07Who overruled the booster engineers who urged NASA not to launch Challenger in the cold?
Their company's managers
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.
Q 08Who commanded Challenger on its final flight?
Dick Scobee
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.
Q 09Which teacher flew on Challenger under the Teacher in Space Project?
Christa McAuliffe
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.
Q 10The teacher chosen for Challenger taught social studies at a high school in which state capital?
Concord, New Hampshire
Concord, New Hampshire was her base; after teaching lessons from orbit, she was to return to share the flight with students.
Q 11That night, President Reagan said Challenger's crew had 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to touch what?
The face of God
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.
Q 12Which space telescope did Challenger's loss delay until 1990?
Hubble
Hubble stayed grounded with the shuttle fleet, and its engineers used the delay to run extra tests and make improvements before launch.
Q 13Which comet was Challenger's final crew scheduled to observe?
Halley
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.
Q 21Why was Challenger's launch held an extra hour on the morning of January 28?
To let ice on the pad melt
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.
Q 22What did Roger Boisjoly, who warned against launching Challenger, spend nearly three decades doing afterward?
Lecturing engineering students on ethics
Lecturing engineering students on ethics took him to schools around the world, even though some colleagues had ostracized him after the disaster.
Q 23Which member of Congress flew on the Shuttle mission just before Challenger's last, then led NASA decades later?
Q 14Bad weather at a transatlantic abort landing site in which region delayed Challenger's launch in January 1986?
West Africa
West Africa was home to the site, Dakar in Senegal; the backup, Casablanca, could not handle night landings, so liftoff moved to the morning.
Q 15What halted Challenger's countdown on January 27, 1986?
A stuck bolt on the hatch handle
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.
Q 16In 2022, divers filming a Bermuda Triangle series found a large piece of Challenger while searching for what?
A World War II plane
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.
Q 17Which NASA center, responsible for Challenger's boosters, did the presidential commission fault for poor management?
Marshall
Marshall, in Huntsville, Alabama, ran the booster program, yet the engineers' cold-weather warnings from the night before never reached top shuttle officials.
Q 18Told not to launch in the cold, NASA's Lawrence Mulloy asked if he should wait until what?
Next April
Next April, he asked, because the engineers advised against launching below 53 °F, the temperature of the coldest previous Shuttle launch.
Q 19After Allan McDonald's company demoted him, what did a congressional resolution threaten?
Barring its NASA contracts
Barring its NASA contracts was the threat, so the company relented, promoted McDonald and put him in charge of redesigning the booster joints.
Q 20What happened to Challenger's boosters after the breakup?
Destroyed by radio signal
Destroyed by radio signal about 110 seconds after launch, because both boosters had survived the fireball and were still flying out of control.
Bill Nelson
Bill Nelson's own flight slipped from December to January, and that delay helped push back Challenger's launch in January 1986.
Q 24What briefly plugged Challenger's leaking booster joint at liftoff?
Burned propellant residue
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.
Q 25What were Challenger's last words on the air-to-ground loop?
'Roger, go at throttle up'
'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.
Q 26Which speechwriter drafted President Reagan's address to the nation on the night of the Challenger disaster?
Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan borrowed its closing lines from 'High Flight', a 1941 sonnet by John Magee, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot.
Q 27Why did NASA's commentator say only 'Obviously a major malfunction'?
No confirmed explosion
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.
Q 28What hung from the lone parachute seen on TV drifting down after Challenger broke apart?
A booster's nose cap
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.
Q 29Which network carried Challenger's launch and explosion live nationally?
CNN
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.
Q 30Where were the unidentified remains of Challenger's crew buried in May 1986?
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery buried them together almost four months on, because recovering the crew from the ocean floor had taken weeks of searching.