US EditionIt's Been 40 Years Since 7 People Were Killed in the Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion
Ignored warnings about O-ring risks in cold weather led to the Challenger disaster, prompting NASA safety reforms that influence current Artemis II missions, NASA says.
- Forty years ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing its seven-member crew on the 25th mission from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- Engineers at Morton Thiokol cautioned that cold would stiffen the synthetic rubber O-rings and increase blow-by risk, while the Morton Thiokol task force documented earlier blow-by, a pattern Diane Vaughan identified as normalization of deviance.
- During the conference call, NASA officials pushed back, and Morton Thiokol executives reversed their engineers' initial 'do not launch' recommendation, with Judson Lovingood later giving a truncated hearing account.
- A special presidential commission investigating Challenger began within a week but missed key NASA witness testimony, while CBS News called it the program's worst disaster and NASA Day of Remembrance rituals endure, including the January 22, 2026 ceremony attended by Jane Smith Wollcott.
- The retrospective highlights lessons meant to inform Artemis II and other crewed missions, as NASA leadership and Administrator Jared Isaacman assert a renewed commitment to safety after reevaluating culture post-disaster.
27 Articles
27 Articles
Editorial: Nation marks 40 years since space shuttle Challenger disaster
Earlier this month, NASA successfully evacuated four crew members from the International Space Station following a medical emergency. The four astronauts — two from the United States, one from Japan and one from Russia — landed safely in the Pacific Ocean on Jan. 15 and the agency announced that all were doing well following their return home. Not so long ago, such an incident would have been the subject of front-page headlines and round-the-clo…
Monday Memories: Students shocked into silence as they watched the Challenger explode in 1986
Students at McCord Junior High School came to school eager to see the first teacher in space blast off in the Challenger shuttle 40 years ago. The school had gone all out integrating the shuttle program into its curriculum, and the students were looking forward to watching Christa McAuliffe teach from space.
40 years ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster changed Central Floridians’ lives
Their eyes were watching. Some knew something was wrong. Others were slow to realize. Soon everyone came to grief. Forty years ago Space Shuttle Challenger climbed into the clear amid blue skies over Cape Canaveral. The nation’s youth watched on TVs across the nation and from school playgrounds across Central Florida. Christa McAuliffe was to be the first teacher in space. But the streak of the rocket’s plume did not look right. “We definitely d…
noticiasdegipuzkoa.eus
noticiasdealava.eusOn January 28, 1986, at 11:38 a.m. local time in Florida, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-air just over a minute after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was being broadcast live to millions of homes around the world. What viewers witnessed was not a new demonstration of technological prowess, but one of the most traumatic accidents in the history of space exploration.
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