The Challenger disaster occurred in 1986 when the Space Shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members. The cause was a failure of an O-ring on a solid-fuel rocket, and the disaster led to a moratorium on shuttle launches and the formation of the Rogers Commission. The investigation found that NASA’s organizational culture was a major reason for the accident. The Challenger disaster is a case study on the inherent danger of spaceflight.
The Challenger disaster occurred when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds after launch on the morning of January 28, 1986. All seven astronauts aboard, including the first member of the Teacher in Space Project, Christa McAuliffe, they were killed. The disaster prompted a 32-month moratorium on shuttle launches and the formation of the Rogers Commission, which included Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, to investigate the cause of the tragic accident.
After an investigation, the Rogers Commission found that the Challenger disaster was caused by the failure of an O-ring on a solid-fuel rocket at liftoff. This created a breach which allowed combustible material from within the booster to impinge on the adjacent and much larger external tank, leading to structural failures. The solid booster also separated from the shuttle. This disturbed the aerodynamic balance of the aircraft, causing it to break up. Various parts of the vessel were subjected to acceleration factors of up to 20g, well beyond the design limits. At such high speeds, this is very fast and deadly. After an extensive search, many components of the Shuttle were recovered from the sea bed. Some of the remains of the crew were interred at the Challenger Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Challenger disaster is a case study on the inherent danger of spaceflight. On February 1, 2003, the spacecraft Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, killing seven other astronauts, demonstrating that the Space Shuttle has more than one catastrophic failure mode.
The Rogers Commission found that NASA’s organizational culture was a major reason for the accident. NASA managers had been aware of a weakness in the O-rings since 1977, nine years earlier, but hadn’t been able to fix it. These weaknesses were due to a temperature vulnerable design in the O-ring by an outside contractor, Morton Thiokol. The launch came after a particularly cold night during which ice built up on the tanks and caused the O-rings to drop below their minimum operating temperature. Even just a couple of seconds after launch, the O-ring failure has already allowed superheated gas to escape out the side of the solid-fuel rocket. Just over a minute after launch, it caused the anomalous plume and cascade of effects that led to the Challenger’s destruction.
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