Space Shuttle Challenger disaster · Cape Canaveral
On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (Cape Canaveral). 7 people died.
- Date
- January 28, 1986
- Place
- Cape Canaveral
- Killed
- 7
- Position
- 28.640°N, 80.280°W
- Wikidata ID
- Q858145
From Wikipedia
On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated about 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 16:39:13 UTC (11:39:13 a.m. EST, local time at the launch site). It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft while in flight.
The mission, designated STS-51-L, was the 10th flight for the orbiter and the 25th flight of the NASA's Space Shuttle program. The crew was scheduled to deploy a commercial communications satellite and study Halley's Comet while they were in orbit, in addition to taking schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe into space under the Teacher in Space Project. This latter task resulted in a higher-than-usual media interest in and coverage of the mission, and the launch and subsequent disaster were seen live in many schools across the United States.
The cause of the disaster was the failure of the primary and secondary O-ring seals in a joint in the right Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB).
Text from Wikipedia, “Space Shuttle Challenger disaster”, CC BY-SA 4.0; shortened to the introduction. Authors.
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Source: Wikidata (CC0) and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Figures such as deaths are as recorded there and may differ from official reports.
