The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986.
Americans have always been at the forefront of pushing our planet towards new frontiers. Nothing has epitomized this more than the space program. But with great risk often comes great hardship and sometimes tragedy. For a generation of Americans, especially those of grammar school age in 1986, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger was a shocking event. Seven astronauts, including a teacher named Christa McAuliffe, who had trained for months to go into space, were killed. After a lengthy investigation, it was found the explosion was caused by defective O-rings in the Challenger’s solid-fuel rockets.
President Ronald Reagan addressed the country on the night of January 28, 1986. He concluded his remarks with the lines, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them…as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” Below is his full address, as well as a tribute to the Challenger astronauts:
The Challenger explosion was not the first time nor the last tragedy that befell the American space program. On January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed on the ground by a fire in their command module while conducting tests for an upcoming Apollo mission. On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board. Most recently, on October 31, 2014, a test pilot for Virgin Galactic, a private company seeking to send passengers into space, was killed, and another pilot was seriously injured in a crash during a test flight.
Americans should be proud of the space program their country has produced. Its efforts landed a man on the moon, produced the world’s first reusable spacecraft through the space shuttle program, produced devices such as the Hubble Space Telescope that have allowed us all to view deeper into space than ever before, and put a rover on Mars to name a few accomplishments. New technologies were created as a result of the space program. A short list includes smoke detectors, solar energy production, insulin pumps, water filtration systems, memory foam, artificial limbs, and video enhancing and analysis systems.
But it is still the individuals willing to push humankind beyond its limits and explore the vastness of our universe that are the heroes. They should be remembered. Below are the names of the astronauts killed in the two space shuttle disasters:
Challenger – Ellison S. Onizuka, Mike J. Smith, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Gregory Jarvis, Ronald E. McNair, Judith A. Resnik.
Columbia – David M. Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon.
