{"id":15763,"date":"2016-01-26T18:32:01","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T10:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/challenger-remembered\/"},"modified":"2016-01-26T18:32:01","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T10:32:01","slug":"challenger-remembered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/challenger-remembered\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenger remembered"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"June
June Scobee Rodgers, widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee, lays a wreath with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in 2014. Credit: NASA\/Bill Ingalls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thirty years after the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated in the clear, cold sky high above Cape Canaveral, the commander\u2019s widow no longer feels anger at NASA and the management missteps and schedule pressure that kept the orbiters flying despite a fatal flaw in their solid-fuel boosters.<\/p>\n

She is at peace with history, her role in it, the heart-wrenching loss of her husband and his six crewmates and her connection with the countless people who will never forget America\u2019s loss of innocence on the high frontier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am able now to treat the event as history rather than avoiding the public scrutiny that overcame us during our private grieving,\u201d said June Scobee Rodgers, whose husband, Francis \u201cDick\u201d Scobee, commanded the 25th shuttle mission. \u201cI\u2019m envious when I look back at Dick Scobee\u2019s pictures, and he\u2019s so young, and I\u2019m a great grandmother now!<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also interesting to hear the perspective from my children as adults when they talk about it,\u201d she told CBS News. \u201cI still hear from people who can tell me exactly where they were and what they were doing, if they were old enough, at the time of the accident. And it\u2019s amazing to me. They want to share their story with me. It\u2019s as though they are sharing the experience of their own grief with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

After multiple delays, Challenger blasted off on mission STS-51L at 11:38 a.m. EST on Jan. 28, 1986. It was the second of 16 missions planned for 1986 as the space agency struggled to meet a brutal schedule that included the back-to-back launches in May, five days apart, of two nuclear-powered planetary probes from shuttles carrying complex hydrogen-fueled Centaur boosters.<\/p>\n

The flight schedule also included a high-priority astronomy mission, the first military shuttle flight into polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, launch of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first fight of a journalist who would become the second so-called \u201cprivate citizen\u201d to fly in space.<\/p>\n

The first was to be Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school teacher who won a nationwide competition to teach lessons from space. She was strapped into a seat on Challenger\u2019s lower deck, between Ronald McNair on her left and Hughes Aircraft Co. satellite engineer Gregory Jarvis on her right.<\/p>\n

Seated on the orbiter\u2019s upper deck were commander Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, flight engineer Judy Resnik and Ellison Onizuka. McAuliffe, Jarvis and Smith were rookies making their first flight while the rest were shuttle veterans.<\/p>\n

\"The
The final crew of the shuttle Challenger takes a break during countdown training in January 1986 to pose for a photo at the launch pad. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Challenger climbed away from launch complex 39B, Scobee Rodgers and the other immediate family members looked on from the roof of the launch control center, or LCC, 3.4 miles from launch complex 39B. McAuliffe\u2019s parents chose to watch the launching from a nearby parking lot below the Kennedy Space Center press site.<\/p>\n

It was a cold day after a night of sub-freezing weather, but the sky was clear and  Challenger put on a thrilling show as it climbed away atop a churning trail of fiery exhaust. Moments later, the crackling roar of those huge boosters reached the LCC and nearby press site.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine, we were on top of the world, I mean, Dick and I were going fast down this highway,\u201d Scobee Rodgers said. \u201cWe married as teenagers, he wanted to be a pilot, I wanted to be an educator, we worked together, helping each other with college, careers, two wonderful children. It was the top of our careers, the top of our lives, I mean, he is now the commander of the space shuttle!<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big deal, and I\u2019m so proud that he is involved in the Teacher in Space program because I was a college professor at the time. I loved and thought the world of Christa McAuliffe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The liftoff appeared normal enough, but 73 seconds later, as the shuttle was passing through 46,000 feet at a velocity just under twice the speed of sound, the spacecraft was engulfed in a sudden maelstrom of fiery vapor and debris.<\/p>\n

From the roof of the LCC and the nearby press site, the orbiter could not be seen, it had disappeared behind the booster exhaust plume seconds earlier as the vehicle arced away to the east. Then, suddenly, the plume appeared to expand and contrails of some sort could be seen shooting out. First one and then the other solid-fuel booster careened away from the ballooning conflagration, corkscrewing aimlessly through the sky.<\/p>\n

Shocked onlookers knew something unusual and probably catastrophic had occurred, but it took several agonizing moments for the severity of the problem to sink in. Some began wondering if Scobee and Smith might be attempting an emergency return-to-launch-site \u2014 RTLS \u2014 abort.<\/p>\n

\"The
The shuttle Challenger soars away from launch pad 39B at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28, 1986. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA commentator Steve Nesbitt in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston did not immediately realize what had happened as he read off trajectory data from his console\u2019s display: \u201cOne minute 15 seconds. Velocity 2,900 feet per second (1,977 mph). Altitude 9 nautical miles. Downrange distance 7 nautical miles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirteen seconds later after the breakup began, flight director Jay Greene called flight dynamics officer \u2014 FIDO \u2014 Brian Perry over an internal audio circuit: \u201cFIDO, trajectory\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry: \u201cGo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greene: \u201cTrajectory, FIDO.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry: \u201cFlight, FIDO, filters (radar) got discreting sources. We\u2019re go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ground control officer N.R. Talbott: \u201cFlight, GC, we\u2019ve had negative contact, loss of downlink.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greene: \u201cOK, all operators, watch your data carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry: Flight, FIDO, till we get stuff back he\u2019s on his cue card for abort modes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greene: \u201cProcedures, any help?\u201d<\/p>\n

Unknown: \u201cNegative, flight, no data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nesbitt, sitting near Greene in mission control, then uttered the first words heard by the public in the wake of the unfolding disaster and inadvertently offered a description that would go down as one of the great understatements of the space age: \u201cFlight controllers here are looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Challenger
Challenger flight director Jay Greene (foreground) is pictured moments after the shuttle disintegrated. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bruce Hall, a veteran CBS News reporter, was watching McAuliffe\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see them, and I could see their anxiety as it came down to the launch period and then how happy they were when they saw the actual liftoff,\u201d he recalled. \u201cYou could see just tremendous joy in their faces. Then, when the explosion happened, I think I was like many of the veterans there, we knew immediately that this was a catastrophe. Christa McAuliffe\u2019s parents did not know that. They thought there was a problem, but they did not have any idea at all of what had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the roof of the launch control center, Nesbitt\u2019s words over loud speakers hit the families hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo here we are, celebrating, and then this major plummet, your grief, your shock, are numbing,\u201d Scobee Rodgers said. \u201cIt takes you from the highest point in your life to the lowest that you never thought you could possibly reached.\u201d<\/p>\n

She remembers the solid rocket boosters \u201ccame screaming off in the wrong direction, and explosions. I don\u2019t have to be told it\u2019s a \u2018major malfunction,\u2019 I\u2019d seen enough launches, I knew. It was a scary, terribly numbing. I couldn\u2019t even walk down the stairs. I fell, my son reached over and helped me, I was so numb and stiff, paralyzing, from viewing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, she remembers feeling grief for the school children across the nation who were watching the launch in their classrooms and looking forward to McAuliffe\u2019s lessons from space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, everyone was concerned and interested in the teacher,\u201d Scobee Rodgers said. \u201cAs the commander\u2019s wife, I felt a great deal of responsibility to help not only my children and the other spouses and their children, but a nation of school children awaiting the lessons from space. \u2026 When we heard the words \u2018major malfunction,\u2019 I knew. I knew it was a terrible disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"New
New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe is seen during preflight training aboard a microgravity research jet. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So did the relatively small contingent of reporters at the nearby press site. CNN reporter John Zarella called it \u201ca horrible, horrible setback for a program that had seen so much incredible success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was so much built up about the space shuttle and what it was going to be able to do and accomplish and how many times they were going to be able to fly it every year,\u201d he recalled in an interview. \u201cThe way it had been sold to the public and to the media and sold to Congress and everybody else and all of that, in one single instant, was over. It was over. Everything in a single instant changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The families were quickly whisked away to NASA\u2019s astronaut crew quarters, the motel-like suites of rooms in the Operations and Checkout Building well away from the LCC and press site. It was there that George Abbey, the director of flight crew operations at the time, told them there was no hope for the crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew about return to launch (site aborts), places where you can land, I\u2019d heard about all those places and you were just hoping that somehow they were safe,\u201d Scobee Rodgers said. \u201cBut he told us they were all lost. Which I could have guessed, just from the reaction of other people and hearing the radio in the background.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that afternoon, Vice President George Bush, Sen. John Glenn and Sen. Jake Garn flew in and met with the families.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stood in a circle and they came in and none of them spoke,\u201d Scobee Rodgers recalled. \u201cNo NASA official spoke, their heads were bowed. Everyone\u2019s grieving, I mean it\u2019s shock. So, I looked to the families and they nodded to me and I thought well, I guess earlier this morning the commander would have spoken, so I will speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thanked them for coming, I knew from the crew and from the families how important space flight was, so I made the request that NASA be able to continue with space flight once they found the cause of the accident. The vice president walked over and gave me his home phone number and said \u2018call if you need to talk.’\u201d<\/p>\n

In the days and weeks that followed, a presidential commission chaired by former Secretary of State William Rodgers would determine the accident was triggered by the failure of O-ring seals between two fuel segments in Challenger\u2019s right-side SRB, allowing a deadly jet of flame to burn through the side of the rocket.<\/p>\n

They learned that the seals had experienced repeated erosion during earlier launchings and that the night before Challenger\u2019s flight, engineers with Morton Thiokol, builder of the SRBs, recommended a delay because of low overnight temperatures that could make the O-rings too stiff to function properly.<\/p>\n

And they learned how Thiokol managers, pressured by their NASA counterparts, overruled the engineers\u2019 objections and opted to proceed with launch.<\/p>\n

\"Unseasonably
Unseasonably frigid temperatures in Florida caused icicles to form on Challenger\u2019s launch pad before the shuttle\u2019s liftoff. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scobee Rodgers, like many family members, was angered by many of the commissions findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone was angry \u2014 surprised, shocked and angry,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember they had all the families together in Washington, DC, my son was with me, a cadet at the Air Force Academy (now an Air Force major general), and he pounded the desk, hard, when they announced that. We were very upset.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you can\u2019t go through life without forgiving. You just can\u2019t go on without forgiving. We\u2019re all human, we all have human flaws. But NASA learned so much, people learned so much from that, now there are textbook lessons about accidents like Challenger and the human flaw of expectations and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the wake of the accident, NASA redesigned the booster fuel segment joints, added a third O-ring and heaters to make sure the seals would work properly under a wide variety of conditions. Numerous other changes were implemented to improve communications and oversight and senior astronauts were put in key management positions.<\/p>\n

NASA resumed shuttle flights in 1988 and by the time the fleet was retired in 2011, 220 solid-fuel boosters had been successfully launched on 110 shuttle missions, all without incident.<\/p>\n

The families, of course, moved on. Scobee Rodgers married an Army general, Don Rodgers, and led the families\u2019 efforts to establish a network of educational centers focused on science, technology and mathematics. Challenger Centers are now in operation in 40 towns and cities around the world and have reached an estimated 4.4 million school kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor so many years I was the founding chairman, I was there all the time, every day,\u201d Scobee Rodgers said. \u201cThen there was development and growth and I was able to back away some and be a board member with everybody else. And now I just get excited to hear what they\u2019re doing. We\u2019re a leader in STEM education. It\u2019s been around for 30 years. We\u2019ve kept up with it, evolving as we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scobee Rodgers stays in touch with all the Challenger families, saying \u201cwe\u2019re all growing older! Thirty years! We go to each others\u2019 kids\u2019 graduations, weddings, we see each other regularly. We all still serve on the Challenger board of directors.\u201d<\/p>\n

She and several other family members plan to attend a memorial service Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n

The \u201cTime of Remembrance\u201d will mark the 49th anniversary of the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that killed Virgil \u201cGus\u201d Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee on Jan. 27, 1967; the 30th anniversary of Challenger\u2019s loss on Jan. 28, 1986; and the 13th anniversary of the Columbia shuttle disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, that killed commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, Michael Anderson and Israeli flier Ilan Ramon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION June Scobee Rodgers, widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee, lays a wreath with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in 2014. Credit: NASA\/Bill Ingalls Thirty years after the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated in the clear, cold sky high above Cape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3437,1390,3439],"class_list":["post-15763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-challenger","tag-space-shuttle","tag-sts-51l"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}