Remembering the Challenger Explosion, 40 Years Later

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by MARK POWELL

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History rarely announces its arrival. It eschews heralding trumpets, preferring instead to creep up on cats’ feet. For example, many Americans were attending usual church services on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Most people were thinking about the upcoming weekend and subsequent Thanksgiving holiday when President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade turned onto Elm Street in downtown Dallas, Texas, on an Indian summer Friday afternoon in late November 1963.

Similarly, January 28, 1986, started off much like any Tuesday morning. Stores and shops were open for business, trading was underway on Wall Street, and kids were in school. The sole exception to the ordinary was the weather. And that was the entrée fate used to make the day historic.

South Carolina, like most of the East Coast, was struggling amid a bitter cold snap. Columbia and Charleston both set record lows for that day (-3 and 12 degrees, respectively). The Arctic chill extended all the way to Florida – causing serious headaches for the folks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

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The space shuttle Challenger – America’s second operational orbiter – was scheduled to launch that morning on its tenth trip to the heavens. This wasn’t just any old mission, either. STS-51-L was to carry Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from Concord, N.H., into orbit where she would deliver the first school lesson from space. McAuliffe had been selected from more than 11,000 educators who had sought the honor.  

But Florida was experiencing a record cold that morning, too. The mission had originally been scheduled for the 22nd. It was postponed to the 23rd, then the 25th, and then the 26th. A planned launch on the 27th was scrubbed due to mechanical issues with ground equipment and crosswinds.

These delays were becoming problematic, since teachers in hundreds of classrooms had built lesson plans around watching McAuliffe speak to their students from space.  

The bad luck carried over into the 28th. The weather and a hardware interface module failure during the fueling process combined to cause further delays. That morning, I was a 24-year-old journalist cutting my teeth on the infant 24-hour news cycle at CNN in Atlanta.

The network carried shuttle takeoffs and landings live. Each delay meant rundowns for live broadcasts had to be thrown out and reassembled on the fly. I vividly remember extensive griping about it that morning. 

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Finally, all systems checked out and the go-ahead to launch was given. At 11:39 a.m. EST, the shuttle’s rocket engines roared to life. Seconds later, its massive solid rocket boosters ignited and Challenger leapt from the launchpad.

As the orbiter raced heavenward everything seemed normal. Challenger had throttled its engines back as it experienced maximum dynamic pressure – or “max Q” – the period/region during its ascent when peak aerodynamic stress is achieved due to atmospheric resistance and the spacecraft’s rapidly increasing velocity.

At mission control in Houston, Texas, astronaut Richard Covey issued a standard call to the orbiter acknowledging that the vehicle had cleared max Q – and had throttled its engines back up to 104% of peak rated thrust.

“Challenger, go at throttle up,” Covey said.

“Roger, go at throttle up,” commander Francis R. Scobee responded from the orbiter’s cockpit.

An instant later, though, shuttle pilot Michael J. Smith was captured on an internal communication system noting something amiss.

“Uh oh,” Smith said.

(Click to view)

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What happened next was first chronicled by CNN correspondent Tom Mintier, who – watching the launch live – described how Challenger’s solid rocket boosters “blew away from the side of the shuttle in an explosion.”

“Obviously a major malfunction,” NASA acknowledged seconds later.

Precisely 73 seconds after takeoff, Challenger was blown apart in a spectacular fireball. Onlookers at the Kennedy Space Center (including McAuliffe’s parents, Ed and Grace), children in schools, and hundreds of thousands watching on cable TV saw it happen right before their eyes.

In one fiery instant, it was over. Seven lives were gone, and NASA’s reputation of having never lost an astronaut in flight was shattered. Not long thereafter, the agency’s reputation for rebuking safety concerns was rightfully repudiated.

A minute-and-a-half after the blast – as debris continued to cascade into the Atlantic Ocean – the worst was confirmed.

“The vehicle has exploded,” NASA’s public address system announced.

In one of the most eloquent addresses of his presidency, Ronald Reagan – who had been scheduled to deliver his ‘State of the Union’ address that evening – spoke instead to a grieving nation.

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives,” Reagan said. “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.'”

In the waters off of Cape Canaveral, rescue turned to recovery, and for weeks the retrieval of the disintegrated craft – first the wreckage and then the remains – was underway. Months later, a blue-ribbon investigation determined the harshly cold weather had caused the seals on Challenger’s right solid rocket booster to fail. This allowed a plume of fire to seep through the booster and ignite the orbiter’s massive fuel tank – which is what caused the explosion.

For the next 32 months, all shuttle missions were grounded. When flights finally resumed with shuttle Discovery’s launch on September 29, 1988, many Americans didn’t breathe easy until well after the commander said the words “go at throttle up.”

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Forty Januarys have come and gone since that fateful Tuesday morning in 1986. More than just seven lives were lost that day. The myth of American invincibility in space perished with them. True, NASA had lost crew members before; in fact, Apollo 1’s three astronauts had died in a flash fire exactly 19 years and one day before the Challenger explosion. But that had been a training mission here on Earth.

“We’ve never had a tragedy like this,” Reagan noted.

And while it was also true that the U.S.S.R. had beaten the U.S. into space, by launching the first satellite and sending the first man into orbit, the U.S. quickly made up lost ground. Not only did we beat the Soviet Union to the moon, but we also went back repeatedly and brought our astronauts home safe and sound each time.

The shuttle program was meant to usher in a new age of space travel. It was thought that within a few years, folks hopping aboard an orbiter for a trip aloft would be as routine as getting on a jet for a jaunt to Los Angeles. I heard it repeatedly said at CNN in those days that Atlanta’s then-new Hartsfield International Airport had runways long enough to accommodate shuttle landings. The age of Buck Rogers space technology seemed at hand. Americans now viewed it with almost ho-hum regularity.

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But those who truly understood the very real risk perpetually accompanying space travel had never been fooled. Speaking at a memorial service the week after the Challenger explosion, former pioneering astronaut turned U.S. Sen. John Glenn articulated the inevitability of what transpired.

“We hoped these last few days would never come,” Glenn said. “And for nearly a quarter of a century, we pushed back the time we knew—intuitively—must sometime be, that day when, despite all our best efforts, there would be a loss.”

That loss was tragically repeated on February 1, 2003, when Columbia, NASA’s first shuttle, disintegrated upon reentry, killing all seven crew members aboard. (In an odd twist of fate, I was working in the CNN newsroom that Saturday as well.)

Time marched on, although the loss of Columbia ultimately signaled NASA’s move away from the shuttle program.

When the orbiter Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011, the era was over. Now NASA is gearing up for its Artemis program, a moon-to-Mars mission that, if successful, would expand space exploration far beyond anything previously attempted.

Yet on January 28, it is proper for us to pause and remember the seven souls who didn’t get to complete their journey – yet whose sacrifice helped make all future expeditions possible.   

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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