In the aftermath of the tragedy, some suggested that the White House pushed NASA to launch the shuttle in time for President Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union address, scheduled for later on January 28.
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Though the general public may not have been watching live, NASA had arranged a satellite broadcast onto TV sets in many schools because of McAuliffe’s role in the mission, and many of the schoolchildren who watched remember the disaster as a pivotal moment in their childhoods. CNN broadcast the launch in its entirety, but cable news was a relatively new phenomenon at the time, and even fewer people had satellite dishes. Eastern Time on a Tuesday) when most people were in school or at work.
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WATCH: Full episodes of ' I Was There' online now.Īll major networks carrying the launch cut away when the shuttle broke apart, and the tragedy occurred at a time (11:39 a.m. Though popular wisdom about the 30-year-old tragedy holds that millions of people watched the Challenger’s horrific fate unfold live on television-in addition to the hundreds watching on the ground-the fact is that most people watched taped replays of the actual event. Relatively few people actually saw the Challenger disaster unfold on live television. 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. 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. But later investigation showed that in fact, there was no detonation or explosion in the way we commonly understand the concept.Ī seal in the shuttle’s right solid-fuel rocket booster designed to prevent leaks during liftoff weakened in the frigid temperatures and failed, and hot gas began pouring through the leak.
It looked like an explosion, the media called it an explosion and even NASA officials mistakenly described it that way initially. The space shuttle was engulfed in a cloud of fire just 73 seconds after liftoff, at an altitude of some 46,000 feet (14,000 meters).
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