On this Day in 1986: Challenger Disaster | WeatherBug
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On this Day in 1986: Challenger Disaster

January 28, 2022
By Weatherbug Meteorologist John Benedict
It has been 36 years since one of the most tragic events in the history of the U.S. space program unfolded. Record cold temperatures during launch exposed a critical malfunction in a rocket booster of the Challenger that caused the space shuttle to explode shortly after lift-off, causing the death of everyone on board.

It was a day that started out with excitement as a team of astronauts led by Commander Francis Scobee planned to set out on a journey into space. The launch was watched by millions of students nationwide as the Challenger took schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe into space. McAuliffe was selected for the Teacher in Space Project where she was planning on performing experiments and teaching two lessons that were to be broadcast to students on TV. The crew was also planning to deploy a communications satellite and study Halley’s Comet on the mission. Sadly, nothing could prepare the crew for what was about to unravel as liftoff initiated that morning.

A series of mistakes and oversight by NASA and the weather at Cape Canaveral, Fla., culminated in cataclysmic explosion that took place, just 73 seconds after liftoff on Tuesday, January 28, 1986, at 11:39 a.m. EST.

President Ronald Regan created the Rodgers Commission to thoroughly investigate the accident. The commission determined a series of mistakes and oversight by NASA and Morton-Thiokol, the manufacturer of the solid rocket booster, contributed to the tragedy. Engineers warned managers at NASA of the peril of launching in cold temperatures, but the launch went ahead as scheduled despite record low temperatures in the Cape Canaveral area ahead of and at the scheduled launch time.    

A series of cold fronts crossed northern Florida the weekend ahead of the launch before a reinforcing cold front moved in the day prior to launch. Arctic high pressure would then settle across Florida heading into launch day. Temperatures plummeted overnight to record lows as clear skies allowed for additional radiational cooling. By morning, temperatures across northern Florida were around 25 degrees below normal. Surface temperatures at liftoff was a frigid 36 degrees, but temperatures bottomed out in the mid-20s earlier that morning, leading to ice forming on the launch pad. Due to the ice the launch was delayed an additional hour to allow for further melting.

Morton-Thiokol engineers who oversaw the construction of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) urged that the launch should not take place if temperatures were not above 53 degrees. However, the minimum temperature for a permitted space launch at the time was 30 degrees and so the launch proceeded. The record cold temperatures reduced the elasticity of the rubber O-rings which could no longer seal the joints in the SRBs. The seal in the right rocket booster ruptured shortly after lift-off which allowed gas from the SRB to burn through the wall of the adjacent external fuel tank which led to the catastrophic explosion of the Challenger.

In the aftermath, Morton-Thiokol and NASA paid $8 million dollars to the families of the astronauts as a part of a settlement. In the wake of this settlement, NASA would then create the Office of Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance to help prevent this situation from occurring again. NASA’s Challenger shuttle is used today as a case study for engineer safety. After three years passed, NASA would resume the Space Shuttle Program with the successful launch of Discovery which carried five astronauts on a mission to space on the morning of September 29, 1988.

Source(s): NASA, weather.gov, Wikipedia.org

Story Image: Surface weather map from the morning of January 28, 1986, showing Arctic high pressure over Florida. (NOAA/WPC)