NASA Remembers Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

The Challenger Space Shuttle exploded just after liftoff. Family members of some of the fallen astronauts attended Thursdays ceremony in Florida, including McAuliffes son, who was just 9 when the explosion occurred.

Killed in the Challenger explosion were Scobee, Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis and McAuliffe, the New Hampshire high school teacher who had been selected as “first private citizen in space”. Although the shuttle program was retired in 2011, she says the space program is alive and flourishing in part, because of lessons learned thirty years ago.

Today back in Boise, it’s the Challenger that was on the minds of many.

“We watched it real time when Challenger exploded”, Jade Mendiola wrote. Subsequent inquiries attributed the disaster to design flaws that led to the failure of O-rings that were supposed to provide a pressure seal on the shuttle’s right Solid Rocket Booster. Some were said to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft; the exact time of death of each astronaut still remains unknown. The crash sent shockwaves through the organisation, causing it to suspend all further space shuttle flights for the next two years, while forensics experts investigated the reason for the accident.

“I feel. A responsibility to carry on her mission”, Irene Porro, director of the Christa McAuliffe Center at Framingham State, said. She was really that voice that spoke for us all.

The students held a special ceremony and moment of silence honoring the woman, mother, teacher and astronaut their school was named after. “It belongs to the courageous”.

Since the disaster, Wheeling Jesuit University was able to open their Challenger Learning Center, to gives kids in our area a hands on lesson on some of the things astronauts might experience, when they go through training.

To honor the crew, their families and friends came together to establish the Challenger Center.

This photo provided by NASA shows the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission 51L.

McAuliffe’s own children have not been very vocal in public throughout the years though they did follow in their mother’s footsteps. He talks directly to the family members of the crew and the other NASA workers.