after five postponements caused by freezing weather and technical glitches. The gleaming craft, one of four in the NASA shuttle fleet, had risen from Launch Pad 39-B at 11:38 a.m. The last flight of Challenger started in the usual flawless, spectacular fashion: space program, beyond saying that it would temporarily suspended flights. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration refused to predict the disaster's impact on the U.S. Other members of the doomed crew were co-pilot Michael Smith, 40, Judith Resnik, 36, Ellison Onizuka, 39, and satellite engineer Gregor Jarvis, 41. Her husband, Steven, and children, Scott, 9, and Caroline, 6, were watching from a VIP stand at the launch site, with Christa's parents, Edward and Grace Corrigan.Īs Challenger exploded into a boiling ball of flame, the Corrigans grabbed each other, but it was not until several seconds later that they appeared to understand what had happened.įrancis Scobee, 46, was the commander of the planned six-day flight, which had intended to release and retrieve one satellite to study Halley's comet and to launch another satellite that would become part of the space communications network. McAuliffe, 37, had planned to give two 15-minute lessons from space, with the PBS public television network beaming them to 25 million students in schools from Florida to Canada and Alaska. One of the victims, McAuliffe, was a high school social studies teacher in Concord, N.H., who had been chosen from 11,146 teachers to become the first "ordinary" citizen in space.Īnother victim was physicist Ronald McNair, 36, whose father Carl operated an automobile body repair shop in Harlem until about eight months ago. and resumed two hours later following inspection of the ice by a team of specialists. The countdown leading to the tragic launch was put on hold about 9:08 a.m.
Icicles then formed at various places on the pad. But the excitement quickly turned into horror when it exploded just 73 seconds after lift off, killing all seven astronauts on board. 28, 1986, millions of people watched with excitement when the Challenger space shuttle took off from its Florida launch pad.
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