![]() The shuttle brought the first woman and African American into space, hosted the first space lab and enabled the first astronaut-run satellite repair. The Challenger had flown nine times before over the previous nine years and helped the United States reach several important milestones. Further wall-to-wall coverage and years of retrospectives have seared the grainy image of a faulty rocket bursting into flames and the Challenger and its seven brave passengers veering off course into the national consciousness. On the morning of January 28, 1986, what was meant to be a seminal moment for NASA and the future of space travel turned into a disaster that was viewed on live TV by millions around the country. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.The explosion that doomed the Challenger space shuttle remains one of the most harrowing and heartbreaking moments in American history. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “ If You Only Read 6 Things This Week ”. ![]() Join 500,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. Never give up, we’ll get there in the end. But they do give us something to strive for – and surely that is the best lesson to take from Challenger, and a fitting tribute to those who have lost their lives in space. But the truth is that many of the documents associated with these ventures are aspirational rather than realistic.įuture visions of human space exploration are either inspiring or laughable, depending where you sit on the optimism-pessimism scale. Meanwhile, ESA’s director-general, Johann-Dietrich Woerner, has declared that he wants to build a village on the Moon, probably using 3D printer technology, and that it should be a global village for all nations. There is a Global Space Exploration Programme and Nasa has reaffirmed its commitment to human exploration of Mars. The arrival of private companies on the scene has given more impetus to the idea that space travel for pleasure is achievable – but the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two in November 2014 again questioned the safety of such enterprises. On the other hand, human spaceflight as a regular, accepted mode of travel is seemingly as far away as it was in 1986. But with every successful launch that takes place, we can be more certain that spaceflight – at least unmanned spaceflight – is becoming more routine. So what is the legacy of Challenger? Have we taken on board all the advanced safety requirements that followed the two shuttle disasters? Have the recommendations on organisational change been followed? Sadly, until there is another disaster, we probably won’t know. Latterly, the private companies SpaceX and Orbital Sciences have also been contracted to transport cargo to and from the ISS. ![]() The shuttle programme ended in 2011, at first leaving supply of the ISS dependent on the Russian Soyuz and European Ariane rockets. One of the most damning findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was the criticism of Nasa’s decision-making, its risk assessment procedures and its organisational structures – concluding that Nasa had failed to learn many of the lessons from Challenger. The Columbia disaster of February 2003, when the shuttle disintegrated on re-entry, killing all seven crew, again halted the programme. The shuttle programme was suspended for almost three years and, following its re-introduction, flew 88 successful missions in 14 years, most of which were to build and supply the International Space Station (ISS). 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’. US president Ronald Reagan’s subsequent speech – paraphrasing John Gillespie Magee’s poem High Flight – expressed the enormity of the calamity. Interest in STS-51-L was particularly high, because school students had followed selection of Christa McAuliffe from 11,000 applicants as part of the Teacher in Space Project. Its launch came at a time when almost every launch was a mission “first”, whether it featured the first American woman, the first African-American, the first European, the first politician. That Challenger mission was the 25th to take off as part of the main Shuttle Transportation System (STS) programme. ![]()
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