Within a day of the shuttle tragedy, salvage operations recovered hundreds of pounds of metal from the Challenger. More than a decade after the Challenger disaster, two large pieces from the spacecraft washed ashore at a local beach. Of the Challenger astronauts, 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.’”ĥ. Widely regarded as one of the best speeches of his presidency, the 650-word address ended with a moving quote from the poem “High Flight,” by the American pilot John McGee Jr., who was killed while flying for the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Reagan postponed his annual message to the nation (the first, and so far only, time in history a president has done so) and addressed the nation about the Challenger instead. But the rumors that pressure was exerted from above, specifically from the Reagan White House, in order to connect the shuttle or its astronauts directly in some way with the State of the Union seem to have been politically motivated and not based on any direct evidence. NASA officials apparently felt intense pressure to push the Challenger’s mission forward after repeated delays, partially due to difficulties getting the previous shuttle, Columbia, back on the ground. Some suggested that the White House pushed NASA to launch the shuttle in time for President Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union address
Challenger space shuttle accident full#
But the cabin hit the water’s surface (at more than 200 mph) a full 2 minutes and 45 seconds after the shuttle broke apart, and it’s unknown whether any of the crew could have regained consciousness in the final few seconds of the fall.
It’s likely that the Challenger’s crew survived the initial breakup of the shuttle but lost consciousness due to loss of cabin pressure and probably died due to oxygen deficiency pretty quickly. The pieces-including the crew cabin-reached an altitude of some 65,000 feet before falling out of the sky into the Atlantic Ocean below. Without its fuel tank and boosters beneath it, however, powerful aerodynamic forces soon pulled the orbiter apart. The fuel tank itself collapsed and tore apart, and the resulting flood of liquid oxygen and hydrogen created the huge fireball believed by many to be an explosion.Īfter the collapse of its fuel tank, the Challenger itself remained momentarily intact and actually continued moving upwards. The astronauts aboard the shuttle didn’t die instantly.Ī seal in the shuttle’s right solid-fuel rocket booster designed to prevent leaks from the fuel tank during liftoff weakened in the frigid temperatures and failed, and hot gas began pouring through the leak.
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