Shortly after liftoff, the seals were breached, and hot pressurized gas from within the SRB leaked and burned through the aft attachment strut connecting it to the external propellant tank (ET). The record-low temperatures of the launch had stiffened the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal the joints. The cause of the disaster was the failure of the two redundant O-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB). The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. The latter resulted in a higher than usual media interest and coverage of the mission the launch and subsequent disaster were screened live in many schools across the United States. The crew was scheduled to deploy a communications satellite and study Halley's Comet while they were in orbit, in addition to taking school teacher Christa McAuliffe into space. The mission, designated STS-51-L, was the tenth flight for the orbiter Challenger and the twenty-fifth flight of the Space Shuttle fleet.
It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft in flight. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was a fatal incident on January 28, 1986, in the United States space program where the Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist, teacher.
0 kommentar(er)
