This Day in History: 28 January 2020
28 January 1986
34 years ago, today, the space shuttle 'Challenger' lifted off from Florida, with Christa McAuliffe on board, on her way to become the first ordinary US citizen to visit space, after winning a competition that earned her a place among the crew of the 'Challenger'. Prior to this, Christa underwent months of shuttle training, but was required to wait 6 days due to the delayed countdown, because of weather and technical issues, but the shuttle finally lifted off on this day. Tragically, with hundreds watching from the ground and millions more on live television, the shuttle exploded. There were, unfortunately, no survivors, and this disaster was the first ever major shuttle accident.
President at the time, Ronald Reagan, appointed a special committee to discover what went wrong with 'Challenger', to prevent this from happening again in the future. The committee included former astronaut, Neil Armstrong, former test pilot, Chuck Yeager, and was led by former secretary of state, William Rogers. The investigation determined that the cause of the disaster was the failure of an 'O-Ring' seal in a rocket, which did not respond as expected, due to the cold temperatures at launch. This caused NASA to redesign many of their space shuttles, and no astronauts were sent into space for 2 years, before 'Discovery' was successfully launched. Another major space shuttle incident occurred in February 2003 when 'Columbia' disintegrated while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, where all died.
Want to find out more about the tragic explosion of the space shuttle that shocked the world? Clickhere for a clip from live coverage (warning: disturbing), or clickhere for more information on the disaster.
No comments:
Post a Comment