Today in History—January 28: A Dark Day in Space Exploration

January 28, 1986: The catastrophic accident that changed NASA's space exploration program forever

The night before the Challenger space shuttle was slated to take off on its 10th mission, a cold wave swept through Florida. By morning the launch pad was covered in a layer of ice.

Barely over a minute after the shuttle had blasted off at 11:38 am, television audiences across the United States witnessed the craft break apart in a fiery explosion. What was meant to be a joyous moment instantly became one of the greatest tragedies in American space history. There were no survivors among the seven crew members. The main cabin, along with wings and other shuttle parts, continued upward after the explosion—and then fell into the Atlantic Ocean.

The launch had greater viewership than a typical flight: Christa McAuliffe, a 37-year-old social studies teacher, had won a competition to be part of the Challenger crew and was planning to teach students lessons from space. The crew also included Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald McNair, Gregory B. Jarvis, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Judith A. Resnik.

So what went wrong? The culprit was an O-ring: a small rubber device used to seal adjacent parts of the spacecraft. In this case the cold temperatures in Florida that January had caused the shuttle’s O-rings to become highly brittle. Because they could not expand to accommodate for adjoining parts, hot exhaust gas was able to move past them and set the rocket’s fuel tank ablaze.

Fun Fact

An earlier Challenger mission had carried Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Space exploration comes with risks, of course, but most Americans couldn’t fathom such a disaster, especially in the context of such a highly publicized mission. It was only after the tragedy that investigations revealed NASA’s numerous oversights—the faulty O-rings had been deemed an “acceptable risk,” and engineers who warned against flying in such frigid temperatures had been ignored. NASA’s budget had also been reduced, leading to cutbacks when it came to safety measures.

Because of what happened with Challenger, NASA overhauled itself. The agency created a new safety office. It also reconfigured the rocket boosters that had caused the fuel tank to go up in flames, adding extra safeguards to prevent O-ring failure. After an almost three-year hiatus, NASA resumed its shuttle flights, but its reputation was never the same.