Whaddup guys I'm back! :D
And today I'll be talking about an event (It's pretty much a tragedy) in the past.
When did it happen? I think all of you reading di post can read the title, but yes it happened in January 28th, 1986. Now, if you have read my previous post about my intro, what's really special (for me) about this date is that it is my birthdate ^-^ (15 years before I was born to be exact) but let's talk about the subject.
What really happened in January 28, 1986 is the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Why did I pick this subject out of anything else? Well, (once again) it's my birthdate so it have something I can relate (I'm definetly lying there), but also because it is included in Astronomy as my favourite subject.
So in the 28th of January 1986, The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster occured when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight with its seven crew member on board. Who are those people? There's five NASA astronouts and two Payload Specialists. They are Francis R. Scoobe, Michael J. Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe (you probably never heard of them, but well... I gotta tell you the facts.)
The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC). Soon after the disaster, President Ronald Reegan gave a speech with a duration of 4 minutes long which became a song prequel by creating a montage of the speech, with the title of "January 28, 1986" by Owl City in their album All Things Bright and Beautiful. The song that the speech prequeled is "Galaxies" also by Owl City in the same album.
After the disaster, they investigated the issue and found out that the disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring was not designed to fly under unusually cold conditions as in this launch. The formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by Unites States President Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident. The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program. It also caused the Air Force decided to cancel its plans to use the Shuttle for classified military satellite launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, deciding to use the Titan IV instead.
The witnesses (watching the liftoff and incident live) are approximately 17% of Americans. Why? because of the presence of Payload Specialist Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space. The news of the incident spreaded quickly, one study reported that 85% of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident.
Is there a good effect after the incident? Yes. Now NASA has become more accurate and precise on their work to prevent this from happening in future rocket projects (or in fact any other things they're working on)
