Out of thousands that applied, and after a lengthy selection process, McAuliffe was selected, along with her backup, Barbara Morgan (who, notably, went on to be selected as an astronaut in 1998 through the normal selection process and flew on STS-118).Īs the late-January launch date approached, the media attention grew to a fever pitch. It was part of a larger effort to show that, maybe, the average person was ready to go to space. Her selection was the result of the “Teacher in Space” program, a NASA program to select someone to teach actual lessons from space. That was the result of the selection of Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire, to fly on board. Where most shuttle launches at this point were going unnoticed because of how routine they had become, this mission drew a large amount of attention. After the mid-air explosion, the spacecraft debris fell into the Atlantic Ocean, just off Florida’s coast. Unfortunately, 73 seconds after launch, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and broke apart, leading to the deaths of all seven crew members.
Space shuttle challenger disaster of 1986 series#
The mission’s main goals were to deploy the second in a series of tracking and data relay satellites and observe Halley’s Comet. The mission was designated STS-51-L and was the 25th mission of the United States’ Space Shuttle program. Little did anyone know that the mission would end with a catastrophic failure that would claim the lives of seven and change NASA forever.
On the morning of January 28, 1986, the world watched as Space Shuttle Challenger launched from Cape Canaveral with a crew of seven on board.
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