On January 28, 1986,
only 73 seconds after it lifted off from
Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Space Shuttle
Challenger exploded. As the world watched
on live television, the ensuing fireball
plummeted out of the sky and disappeared into
the ocean below. The loss of the Challenger and
its crew, Francis Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik,
Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, and Christa
McAuliffe stunned the nation and became a defining moment
for a generation of Americans. Today we're going to take a
look at some shocking facts about the Challenger
shuttle disaster. But before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Channel. After that, please
leave a comment, and let us know what other
space exploration-related topics you would like to hear about. Now, let's go back
to January of 1986. Originally built in
1975 as a test vehicle for the Space Shuttle
program, the Challenger wouldn't be transformed into an
actual spacecraft until 1979. It was first launched
in 1983 for the mission that would entail the
program's first spacewalk. That wasn't the last
first the Challenger would participate in. It was also the
shuttle that carried the first female American
astronaut, Sally Ride, as well as the first
African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford. The flight of the
Challenger was supposed to be historic because of one
of its crew members, 37-year-old Christa McAuliffe. Though she was normally just
a social studies teacher from Concord High
School in New Hampshire, McAuliffe had been selected by
NASA's Teacher in Space program to be the first
educator in space. Designed to inspire children
and generate publicity for NASA, the plan called for McAuliffe
to accompany the Challenger astronauts into orbit
and teach a few lessons while they were there. Because of McAuliffe's
presence, the launch was heavily covered
by the media. And NASA itself provided
numerous schools with a raw satellite feed. This meant thousands
of schoolchildren, including those from
McAuliffe's own class, were watching live when
the tragedy occurred. Christa McAuliffe wasn't
meant to be the only passenger on the Challenger
who would capture the attention of children. NASA also made efforts to get
Sesame Street star, Big Bird, on the shuttle. They even contacted Caroll
Spinney, the beloved actor who played the giant, yellow
muppet about participating in the mission. The plan was never approved
by mission control. But in 2015, NASA did
confirm that the conversation with Spinney and the producers
of Sesame Street took place. [MUSIC PLAYING] The pilot for the mission, which
was called STS-52-L by NASA, was Mike Smith. It was to be the first and
last spaceflight of his career. Smith also holds the
distinction of speaking the last words recorded by any
member of the Challenger crew. Just before the explosion,
the shuttle's voice recorder captured Smith saying, uh-oh,
indicating that at least one crew member knew
something was going wrong. Pilot Mike Smith
wasn't the only person who knew something wasn't
right prior to the explosion. In fact, on the evening
before the launch, a group of engineers
from a NASA contractor called Morton Thiokol tried
to convince their superiors to delay the mission. A meeting was held where
the engineers pointed out the launch was
scheduled to take place in colder weather than any
previous shuttle launch. This was important because
the rubber O-rings, which sealed various parts
of the shuttle, had frequently failed to
perform under chilly conditions. Sadly, the engineers were
overruled by their managers. One of those engineers,
Bob Eberling, returned from the meeting
and told his wife, it's going to blow up. Decades later,
Eberling would recall that NASA had their minds
set on going up and proving to the world they were right. And they knew what
they were doing. But they didn't. For his part, Eberling would
retire after the disaster. Decades later, he told the
media that his decision to go along with the plans
after being overruled haunted him for the
rest of his life. [MUSIC PLAYING] The engineers from
Morton Thiokol were exactly right
in their predictions. The launch proceeded in
below freezing temperatures. And when the shuttle
lifted off, the O-ring seal on the right rocket
booster failed. Heated gas escaped
from the rocket and essentially
vaporized the material connecting the booster
to the shuttle's tank. This created a deadly mixture of
liquid oxygen and hydrogen gas. And at 46,000 feet,
the combination ignited turning the
challenger's fuel tank into a massive fireball. Despite this, the solid
fuel strap-on boosters were unaffected and continued
to carry the shuttle upwards. [MUSIC PLAYING] In the immediate
wake of the disaster, it was widely believed that
the crew of the shuttle had died instantly. However, the
evidence would later suggest a far more disturbing
scenario, one which NASA had attempted to obscure. The Miami Harold's
Tropic magazine undertook an independent
investigation of the accident which revealed
that contrary to early reports, the shuttle cabin had not
depressurized in the explosion. This means that the crew
was likely alive and awake for the entire three
mile descent from the sky to the Atlantic Ocean below. This conclusion is
backed up by the fact that several of the
astronauts had time to manually activate their
personal emergency air packs. [MUSIC PLAYING] While space travel is
incredibly dangerous, prior to the
Challenger disaster, NASA had never lost an
astronaut in spaceflight. In fact, the only
previous fatalities the program had
experienced were the deaths of Apollo 1 astronauts Roger
Chaffee, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and Edward White who
all perished in a fire during a ground test
on January 27, 1967. January 28th wasn't just
the day that the Challenger was supposed to lift off. It was also the date scheduled
for President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address. However, with the disaster
only six hours old, the president opted to
delay the annual speech and instead personally
update the American people on the tragedy. The crew of the Space
Shuttle Challenger honored us with the manner in
which they live their lives. This speech would be hailed
as one of Reagan's greatest, quite a testament for a man
whose nickname was "The Great Communicator." Thank you. The explosion of the
Challenger scattered wreckage over a vast swath of
the Atlantic Ocean. And salvage crews
would spend weeks recovering all of the pieces. In fact, it would take six
weeks until Naval divers finally located the resting
place of the crew cabin 100 feet beneath the water,
approximately 15 miles east of Cape Canaveral. The remains of the
astronauts were recovered. And those that
could be identified were returned to their families. Those that couldn't were
buried under a monument at Arlington National Cemetery. Following the
disaster, investigators determined that NASA
had deliberately violated launch rules. Engineers had warned
their superiors that it was too cold for
the mission to proceed. And launching in
such low temperatures was against NASA's
own procedures. A former chief scientist
at NASA, named Ken Iliff, later claimed that this
failure to observe the rules was the primary cause
of the accident. So why did NASA ignore the
warnings and press ahead? There were many factors that
influenced the launch decision. But the Rogers Commission
noted that in an effort to speed launch times to meet
NASA's goal of 24 missions a year, the agency had
pushed its people and systems beyond their capabilities. This drive to
achieve more launches was tied directly to the
survival of the Space Shuttle program as it tried to
fulfill its designed intent as a single-launch vehicle
that could serve the nation's growing commercial,
scientific, and military launch requirements. The explosion of the
Challenger made headlines throughout the world. And almost immediately there
were calls for the entire Space Shuttle program to be halted. This suspension would last
three years, during which time NASA worked to
implement the safety recommendations of a
presidential panel called the Rogers Commission. The commission, which included
high profile astronauts like Neil Armstrong
and Sally Ride, was formed to help
prevent similar disasters from happening again. And it mostly worked. It wouldn't be until 2003
that NASA would experience another tragic incident. That time it was the
Space Shuttle Columbia that burned up during reentry. [MUSIC PLAYING] Debris from the
Challenger would continue to wash up on the
coast of Florida long after the disaster. For example, in
December of 1996, almost 11 years after the
explosion, beach-goers at Cocoa Beach, over 20 miles
away from Kennedy Space Center, found two large pieces of the
shuttle washed up in the surf. The pieces were so big, NASA
had to use a front end loader to pick them up and move
them from the beach. The death of a civilian,
Christa McAuliffe, was especially damaging
to the space program. And the fallout would
last for decades. In fact, it would be
22 years before NASA would send up another civilian. Incidentally, that
civilian would be Barbara Morgan, who
was Christa McAuliffe's backup for the original
Challenger mission. Morgan, who like McAuliffe was
a teacher of social studies and English, joined the crew
of Space Shuttle Endeavor for a successful
mission in 2007. [MUSIC PLAYING] The explosion of the Challenger
changed America and its space program forever. It would also prove to be
an inspiration to artists who would memorialize the
tragedy in sculptures, songs, and television shows. One memorable example
of this took place at the Rendez-vous
Houston concert in 1986, where musician,
John Michel Jarre, a friend of Challenger
astronaut Ronald McNair, played a saxophone solo McNair
himself intended to play during the doomed mission. The track would go on to be
sampled in the music of Frank Turner, Adam Young, John
Denver, and even Beyoncé. The brave, wonderful people
who were aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle. It's called Flying For Me. The disaster was
also acknowledged in the scripts of then
popular television shows like Punky Brewster and Star
Trek The Next Generation. We were watching the
Space Shuttle take off. It exploded. [MUSIC PLAYING] At the time of its
destruction, the Challenger was carrying more
than astronauts and scientific equipment. It was also carrying
a soccer ball. Crew member Ellison Onizuka
had brought with him a soccer ball that
had once been used by his daughter, Janelle's,
high school soccer team. The soccer ball miraculously
was recovered intact from the wreckage
of the shuttle. It was returned to
Onizuka's daughter who allowed it to be put on display
as a memorial at Clear Lake High School. Fast forward 30 years
to when Shane Kimbrough, another astronaut with a
daughter who attended Clear Lake, asked the school if he
could take the ball with him on a mission to the
International Space Station. The school obliged. And in February
of 2017, Kimbrough tweeted an emotional photo from
the International Space Station which showed Onizuka's soccer
ball floating in zero gravity. Do you remember the
Challenger disaster? Where were you when it happened? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
