January 28, 1986: Challenger, and how Titusville remembers it

The Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at 11:38 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 28, 1986, on mission 51-L. Seventy-three seconds later it was gone. The presidential commission that investigated the accident found that the seals in a joint of the right solid rocket booster failed, letting hot gas escape. It was also the coldest morning on which a Shuttle had ever launched. All seven crew members died.

The coldest launch

The night before had been bitter by Florida standards. The commission’s report says the forecast called for clear, very cold weather, with temperatures in the low twenties overnight, and ice built up around the launch pad. An ice inspection team went out at 1:35 a.m., and again later in the morning, and the launch was held twice to let the ice melt, pushing liftoff two hours past the planned 9:38 a.m.

The crew were in their seats by 8:36 a.m. At the weather briefing, the report notes, temperature and ice on the pad were discussed, “but neither then nor in earlier weather discussions was the crew told of any concern about the effects of low temperature on the Shuttle System.”

At liftoff the air temperature, measured about 1,000 feet from the pad, was 36°F, “15 degrees colder than that of any previous launch.”

The crew

The commander was Francis R. Scobee and the pilot Michael J. Smith. Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair were the mission specialists. Two payload specialists completed the crew: Gregory B. Jarvis, a former Air Force engineer, and Christa McAuliffe, a teacher born in Boston, who had been selected for the Teacher in Space project and assigned to 51-L in July 1985.

Seventy-three seconds

The commission reconstructed the flight from film and telemetry. The last data from Challenger arrived 73.618 seconds after launch. At about 73 seconds the external tank failed in “an explosive burn of hydrogen and oxygen propellants” that exposed the orbiter to aerodynamic loads it couldn’t survive, and the orbiter broke apart. The two solid rocket boosters flew out of the fireball and were destroyed by the Air Force range safety officer 110 seconds after launch.

The commission’s conclusion was specific: the loss “was caused by a failure in the joint between the two lower segments of the right Solid Rocket Motor,” where the seals meant to keep hot gases from leaking through the joint were destroyed. No other part of the Shuttle system, it found, contributed to the failure.

Across the river

Titusville sits across the Indian River from the Kennedy Space Center pads. Its memorial to the people lost in the program is at Space View Park, dedicated in 1994, where the U.S. Space Walk of Fame Foundation’s “In the Line of Duty” monument honors the space workers and astronauts who died in support of the space program. The park is covered on our Space View Park page.

Further Reading

• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe