January 28, 1986: The Space Shuttle Challenger Is Destroyed

Top row, left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe,

Greg Jarvis and Judy Resnik.

Bottom row, left to right: Michael J. Smith,

Dick Scobee and Ron McNair.

January 28, 1986, 11:39 AM, 40 years ago: The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes, 1 minute and 13 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all 7 astronauts aboard.

The 10th mission for the orbiter, and the 25th Shuttle mission overall, it was America's 1st in-flight space travel tragedy. Previously, on January 27, 1967, a fire during a ground test of Apollo 1 led to the deaths of 3 astronauts; 6 other astronauts had been killed in plane test flight crashes; and the Soviet space program had lost 5, including 3 in a single spaceflight in 1971.

The flight had already been delayed twice, and the decision was made to launch despite temperatures being lower than ideal. Even Florida has some days that can be classified as Winter, and the ground temperature at launch was just 36 degrees -- still 15 degrees lower than any other Cape Canaveral launch, ever. The low temperature caused a failure in the "O-ring" seals, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside, and ignite the external fuel tank.

The crew:

* Captain Gregory B. Jarvis, U.S. Air Force, mission commander, 41 years old, from Mohawk, in Central New York.

* Lieutenant Colonel Francis "Dick" Scobee, U.S. Air Force, 46, from Auburn, Washington, outside Seattle.

* Captain Michael J. Smith, U.S. Navy, 40, from Beaufort, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks

* Colonel Ellison S. Onizuka, U.S. Air Force, 39, from Kona, Hawaii.

* Doctor Judith A. Resnik, civilian engineer, 36, from Akron, Ohio.

* Doctor Ronald E. McNair, civilian physicist, 35, from Lake City, South Carolina.

* Christa McAuliffe, 37, from Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston. A social studies teacher at Concord High School in Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, she had won a contest to be a "teacher in space." This made her the face of the mission, and, by extension, its greatest tragedy.

It was the 2nd spaceflight each for Onizuka, McNair and Resnik. The others were each on their 1st. Onizuka was the 1st Asian-American to fly in space, and also the 1st person of Japanese ancestry to do so, for any country. McNair was the 2nd African-American in space, after Guion Bluford in 1983; Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, a pilot in the Cuban Air Force, was the 1st black person in space, aboard a Soviet mission in 1980.

Had the mission succeeded, McAuliffe would have been the 10th woman in space. Resnik was the 4th, following Soviets Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Sveltana Savitskaya in 1982, and American Sally Ride in 1983. Resnik was also the 1st Jewish American in space, and the 2nd of her faith to reach space, following the Soviets' Boris Volynov in 1969.

I was a junior at East Brunswick High School at the time. By a weird twist of events, one of our teachers had reached the semifinal round of the "teacher in space" project. I won't mention his name, because he later disgraced himself in a way I won't mention, either.

I had just come back from lunch, and was about to start my English class, when a friend ran up to me and said, "Mike, the Shuttle blew up!"

When the Columbia was the 1st Space Shuttle launched, in 1981, our local newspaper did a feature on myself and 2 other students at my elementary school who were particularly interested in spaceflight. It was the 1st U.S. spaceflight since the Apollo-Soyuz mission, 6 years earlier. It was the long-delayed next step in American spaceflight. It was a big deal.

But by 1986, Shuttle flights had become routine. No one even brought TV sets into classrooms to watch the launches anymore.

So when the friend said, "The Shuttle blew up!" I wasn't sure of what he was talking about. To me, it sounded like a code from a spy movie. He explained. The English teacher confirmed it. When the class ended, I went home, skipping the rest of the day. I sat in front of the TV set, watching it over and over again.

For my generation, born after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King -- and after the good news of the 1st Moon landing, and being old enough to watch but not understand the good-and-bad news of the resignation of President Richard Nixon -- it was our first event like that, our first "Where were you when... " moment, our first "Ran home from school and watched the same images on TV over and over again" event. Maybe it wouldn't have been, if Ronald Reagan, still President at this point, hadn't survived his assassination attempt in 1981.

But, for my generation, it would be that moment, until September 11, 2001. And, since that was a crime, as was the Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021, the Challenger disaster remains our defining tragedy, even after the Columbia was similarly lost, 17 years to the week later.

I saw the replay of the launch, and I saw the turn, and a little over a minute in, someone at Mission Control said, "Challenger, go with throttle-up." And pilot Smith said, "Roger, go with throttle-up."

Before NATO standardized "phonetic alphabet," with "Romeo" meaning the letter R, "Roger" was used for "received," as in, "I have received and understood your last transmission." It's still used in flying today, both commercial and private. On military flights, "Roger that" is a common use. "Roger Wilco" means, "I have received and understood, and will comply."

But after Smith's acknowledgement, someone on board the orbiter said, "Uh-oh!" And then came the explosion. There was a big cloud of smoke, and only the 2 booster rockets emerged, flying uncontrollably. No orbiter. No external tank. They were in pieces. And Mission Control kept giving orders, because they were looking at their instruments, not their screens -- which, not that I knew it at the time, was exactly what they were supposed to do. They were looking at the "telemetry" coming in.

It was only when they received no response to multiple transmissions that they looked at their screens, and saw the cloud. Finally, somebody, in a calm monotone that seemed awfully cold to those of us who were watching this after the fact, made the most "You think?" statement of all time: "Flight control looking carefully at the situation. Obviously, a major malfunction."

When the crew compartment was found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it was intact, but it was determined that its emergency eject system was inoperable from the moment of the explosion. The astronauts probably died on impact with the water, knowing they were doomed. At least they didn't suffocate or drown.

Reagan was scheduled to deliver the State of the Union Address before a Joint Session of Congress that night. (The SOTU is usually delivered in late January or early February, either on a Tuesday night, or a Wednesday night, and this was a Tuesday night in late January.) The Address was postponed a week, to February 4. Instead, Reagan addressed the nation from the Oval Office of the White House. For all his flaws, he made a great "Comforter-in-Chief":

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, ``Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy.'' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us...

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them...

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

A commission later determined that the cold weather caused a key part of one of the Shuttle's booster rockets to fail. Florida usually doesn't get cold, but it was just 26 degrees Fahrenheit at the intended launch time of 9:38 AM. NASA waited for it to get warmer. It was 36 degrees at the 11:38 launch. Clearly, this was still not warm enough.

No American spaceflight has been launched at so low a temperature again. NASA took the time to get it right with the necessary parts, and did not launch again until September 29, 1988, when Discovery was launched.