Challenger tragedy turns 40 years old. 7 astronauts, including a teacher, lost their lives

The tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds after takeoff and disintegrated in the Atlantic, took the lives of the 7 crew on board, including a primary school teacher, and left a permanent mark on NASA and the United States’ space adventure.

40 years ago today. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for its 10th mission in space.

Unfortunately, the ship never reached its destination: exploded 73 seconds after takeoffand disintegrated in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida.

No one survived the accidentwhich left a permanent mark on the North American space agency, its contractors and the country. The ship carried seven people, including the teacher Christa McAuliffewho participated in the “Teacher in Space” program.

McAuliffe would fly missions and teach classes on board. After his death, numerous North American schools were named after him.

In addition to the primary teacher, astronauts Gregory Jarvis, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, Michael Smith, who piloted the spacecraft, and Francis Scobeethe mission commander.

Most of the crew will have survived the initial explosion, and remained conscious during the fall towards the ocean, finding death at the moment of impact with the water.

The Challenger explosion is considered one of the most shocking tragedies of the North American program. After being successively postponed, the launch of the shuttle took place at 11:38 am on January 28th, with the aircraft reaching 14 km altitude above the Earth’s surface.

An independent commission investigated the tragic accident, and concluded that it resulted from a combination of factors. The , with 260 pages, cannot be summarized in a few words, but, according to the , one of the most cited passages is the following: “The decision to launch Challenger was wrong”.

Several of the people involved in the project warned that the back-and-forth not be prepared for the launch, and one of the elements even refused to sign a recommendation to move forward with the launch.

But the countdown began, at the initially planned time, and the Challenger took off towards its tragic destination.

In addition to technical problems, including the infamous failure of a seal ‘O-ring’the unusually cold conditions that were felt on the fateful day decision-makers should have takenwhich were based on several assumptions that turned out to be unfounded, the cancel the launch.

The myth of Icarus

The space shuttle was a sophisticated reusable spacecraftused by NASA as a satellite launch vehicle, a spacecraft for its manned missions to repair devices in orbit in space and refueling of the International Space Station.

It became the successor to the Apollo spacecraft used during the Apollo Project, which took Man to the Moon. The first space shuttleColumbia, made its maiden voyage in 1981, and the last flight of the program was carried out by Atlantis in 2011.

The six space shuttles that NASA built were used in a total of 135 missions — during which countless satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope were launched.

Space shuttles were also used to carry out scientific experiments in orbit and participated in the construction and maintenance of the International Space Station.

Of the six space shuttles, just five flew on missions: Columbia (1981-2003), Challenger (1983-1986), Discover (1984-2011), Atlantis (1985-2011) and Endeavor (1992-2011).

The sixth space shuttle, Enterprise, did not make it any mission and is on display at Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, in New York.

Unfortunately, the Challenger was not the only major tragedy of the Space Shuttle program. Seventeen years later, on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during reentryafter completing the STS-107 mission, causing the death of 7 more astronauts.

This second accident led to the creation of a new commission of inquirycalled the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which produced a two-volume report, in which it also concluded that a set of failures technical and human was at the origin of the deaths of astronauts.

These two tragedies precipitated the closure of the Space Shuttle program — leaving NASA at the time dependent on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for your trips to the International Space Station.

Currently, NASA and Roscosmos missions to the ISS are launched in naves Dragon da SpaceX. After the recent incident, which rendered the Baikonur cosmodrome unusable, Elon Musk’s aerospace ships are the only way to take crews to and from the space station.