Space Shuttle Challenger
Challenger was destroyed in the second minute of STS-51-L, the orbiter’s tenth mission, on January 28, 1986 at 11:38:00 a.m. EST, when an O-ring seal on its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed. The O-rings failed to seal due to a variety of factors, including unusually cold temperatures. This failure allowed a plume of flame to leak out of the SRB and impinge on both the external fuel tank (ET) and SRB aft attachment strut. This caused both structural failure of the ET and the SRB pivoting into the orbiter and ET. The orbiter’s attitude rotated out of the normal flight profile and the vehicle assembly then broke apart under aerodynamic loads.
This post was published on March 2, 2015 10:56 pm
In a new batch of documents obtained by The Black Vault, the Department of Defense…
Background Movements for civil rights were a worldwide series of political movements for equality before…
Background Welcome to the FBI Files on Historical Figures & Groups archive at The Black…
The Department of Defense has released a collection of internal emails in response to a…
Background You can get quite a bit of material under the Freedom of Information Act…
The Department of Defense (DoD) has released, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request…