At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.
In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.
CNN reports “For Lt. Gen. Richard “Rich” Scobee, losing his father in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger was a personal tragedy he and the families of other members of the crew have shared with the nation for 33 years.
“If you have ever lost somebody that you loved, it’s that exact feeling,” Scobee told CNN this month, as the anniversary approached. “I just shared my loss with the country. I think it’s my responsibility to share some of that — because it’s part of our history.”
On January 28, 1986, Scobee was about to graduate from the Air Force Academy when he joined his mother and the other crew members’ families in Florida to watch his father, mission commander Dick Scobee and six other astronauts blast off aboard Challenger.
He remembers standing on the roof of NASA’s Mission Control at the Kennedy Space Center and being excited that the crystal clear sky would offer a perfect view of the separation of Challenger’s solid rocket boosters.
Seconds after liftoff, “I knew something was wrong immediately,” Scobee recalls. “I looked at my mom and she had figured that out too.”
Watching his mother, June, go through it was horrible memory that has never left him.
via The History Channel / CNN
