STS-51-L

STS-51-L
	Challenger launches at the start of STS-51-L. 73 seconds later, the right SRB aft strut would fail, causing the aerodynamic breakup of the orbiter and the deaths of all 7 crew on board.
Names	Space Transportation System-25
Mission type	Satellite deployment
Operator	NASA
Mission duration	6 days and 34 minutes (planned); 1 minute and 13 seconds (achieved)
Distance travelled	18 mi (29 km)
Orbits completed	Failed to achieve orbit (96 planned)
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft	Space Shuttle Challenger
Launch mass	2,685,210 lb (1,217,990 kg)
Landing mass	199,704 lb (90,584 kg) (planned)
Payload mass	48,363 lb (21,937 kg)
Crew
Crew size	7
Members	Francis R. "Dick" Scobee; Michael J. Smith; Ellison S. Onizuka; Judith A. Resnik; Ronald E. McNair; Gregory B. Jarvis; S. Christa McAuliffe;
Start of mission
Launch date	January 28, 1986, 16:38:00 UTC (11:38 am EST)
Launch site	Kennedy, LC-39B
Contractor	Rockwell International
End of mission
Destroyed	January 28, 1986, 16:39:13 UTC (11:39:13 am EST)
Landing date	February 3, 1986, 17:12:00 UTC (12:12 pm EST) (planned)
Landing site	Kennedy, SLF Runway 33 (planned)
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric orbit (planned)
Regime	Low Earth orbit
Perigee altitude	177 mi (285 km)
Apogee altitude	183 mi (295 km)
Inclination	28.45°
Period	90.40 minutes
Instruments
	Comet Halley Active Monitoring Program (CHAMP); Fluid Dynamics Experiment (FDE); Phase Partitioning Experiment (PPE); Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy (SPARTAN-203); Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP); Teacher in Space Project (TISP);
	; STS-51-L mission patch; ; Back row: Onizuka, McAuliffe, Jarvis and Resnik; Front row: Smith, Scobee and McNair Space Shuttle program ← STS-61-C (24) STS-26 →; Cancelled: STS-61-E →

STS-51-L was the disastrous 25th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the final flight of Space Shuttle Challenger.

It was planned as the first Teacher in Space Project flight in addition to observing Halley's Comet for six days and performing a routine satellite deployment. The mission never achieved orbit; a structural failure during its ascent phase 73 seconds after launch from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B on January 28, 1986, killed all seven crew members—Commander Francis R. "Dick" Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory B. Jarvis and S. Christa McAuliffe—and destroyed the orbiter.

Immediately after the failure, President Ronald Reagan convened the Rogers Commission to determine the cause of the explosion. The failure of an O-ring seal on the starboard Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) was determined to have caused the shuttle to break up in flight. Space Shuttle flights were suspended for 32 months while the O-rings and other hazards that could have destroyed the vehicle on following missions were addressed. Shuttle missions resumed in September 1988 with STS-26.

Planned mission

The tenth mission for Challenger, STS-51-L, was scheduled to deploy the second in a series of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS-B), carry out the first flight of the "Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy" (SPARTAN-203) / Halley's Comet Experiment Deployable in order to observe Halley's Comet, and carry out several lessons from space as part of the Teacher in Space Project and Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP). The flight marked the first American orbital mission to involve in-flight fatalities. It was also the first American human spaceflight mission to launch and fail to reach space; the first such mission in the world had been the Soviet Soyuz 18a mission, in which the two crew members had survived. Gregory Jarvis was originally scheduled to fly on the previous shuttle flight (STS-61-C), but he was reassigned to this flight and replaced by Congressman Clarence W. "Bill" Nelson.^[2]

Crew


Position	Astronaut
Commander	Francis R. "Dick" Scobee Would have been second spaceflight
Pilot	Michael J. Smith Would have been first spaceflight
Mission Specialist 1	Ellison S. Onizuka Would have been second spaceflight
Mission Specialist 2 Flight Engineer	Judith A. Resnik Would have been second spaceflight
Mission Specialist 3	Ronald E. McNair Would have been second spaceflight
Payload Specialist 2	Gregory B. Jarvis Would have been first spaceflight Hughes Space and Communications
Payload Specialist 1	S. Christa McAuliffe Would have been first spaceflight Teacher in Space Project

Backup crew


Position	Astronaut
Payload Specialist 1	L. William Butterworth Hughes Space and Communications
Payload Specialist 2^[3]	Barbara R. Morgan Teacher in Space Project
Morgan would be selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998 and flew on STS-118 in 2007 as a mission specialist.

Crew seat assignments

This seating assignment chart depicts what would have happened if the mission had been performed as planned.

Seat^[4]	Launch	Landing (planned)	Seats 1–4 are on the flight deck. Seats 5–7 are on the mid-deck.
1	Scobee
2	Smith
3	Onizuka	McNair
4	Resnik
5	McNair	Onizuka
6	Jarvis
7	McAuliffe

Ascent failure and disaster

During the ascent phase, 73 seconds after liftoff, the vehicle experienced a catastrophic structural failure resulting in the loss of crew and vehicle. The Rogers Commission later determined the cause of the accident to have been the failure of the primary and secondary (backup) O-ring seals on Challenger's right Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). The failure of these seals allowed a flamethrower-like flare to impinge upon one of two aft SRB attach struts, which eventually failed, freeing the booster to pivot about its remaining attachment points. The forward part of the booster cylinder struck the external tank inter-tank area, leading to a structural failure of the Space Shuttle external tank (ET) – the core structural component of the entire stack. A rapid burning of liberated propellants ensued. With the structural "backbone" of the stack compromised and breaking up, the SRBs flew off on their own, as did the orbiter, which rapidly broke up due to overwhelming aerodynamic forces. The launch had been approved despite a predicted ambient temperature of 27 °F (−3 °C), well below the qualification limit of major components such as the SRBs, which had been certified for use only at temperatures above 39 °F (4 °C).^[5] Evidence found in the remnants of the crew cabin showed that several of the emergency Personal Egress Air Packs (PEAPs) carried by the astronauts had been manually activated, suggesting that forces experienced inside the cabin during breakup of the orbiter were not inherently fatal, and that at least three crew members were alive and capable of conscious action for a period following vehicle breakup.^[6] "Tracking reported that the vehicle had exploded and impacted the water in an area approximately located at 28.64° north, 80.28° west".^[7]

Crew fate

Divers from the USS Preserver located what they believed to be the crew cabin on the ocean floor on March 7, 1986. A dive the following day confirmed that it was the cabin and that the remains of the crew were inside.^[8] No official investigation into the Challenger disaster has determined the cause of death of the astronauts; it is almost certain that the explosion itself did not kill the entire crew as 3 of the 4 Personal Egress Air Packs (PEAPs) that were recovered had been manually activated. This would only be done during an emergency or loss of cabin pressure. PEAPs do not provide a pressurized air flow and would still have resulted in the astronauts losing consciousness within several seconds.^[9] There were media reports alleging that NASA had a tape recording of the crew panicking and on-board conversation following the explosion during the 2 minute 45 second free fall before hitting the sea east of Florida. This was likely fabricated and no recording exists, as the crew may have been unconscious from loss of cabin pressure and the astronauts did not wear individual voice recorders.^[10]

Mission objectives

Deployment of Tracking Data Relay Satellite-B (TDRS-B) with an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) booster
Flight of "Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy" (SPARTAN-203)/Halley's Comet Experiment Deployable
Fluid Dynamics Experiment (FDE)
Comet Halley Active Monitoring Program (CHAMP)
Phase Partitioning Experiment (PPE)
Three Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP) experiments
Two lessons for the Teacher in Space Project (TISP)
(unofficial) Ronald E. McNair was planning to play the saxophone in space for a track on Jean-Michel Jarre's album "Rendez-Vous".

Attempt	Planned	Result	Turnaround	Reason	Decision point	Notes
1	25 Jan 1986, 9:37:00 am	Scrubbed	—	Weather		Weather at transatlantic abort site
2	27 Jan 1986, 9:37:00 am	Scrubbed	2 days 0 hours 0 minutes	Weather and technical	27 Jan 1986, 12:35 pm (T−00:09:00 hold)	Equipment failures in orbiter closeout, cross winds at shuttle landing site.^[11]
3	28 Jan 1986, 11:38:00 am	Failure	1 day 2 hours 1 minute	Technical	28 Jan 1986, 11:39 am (T+00:01:13)	Originally scheduled for 9:37 AM, the launch was delayed due to technical issues with fire detection system. Loss of crew and vehicle. Right SRB O-ring failure and orbiter vehicle disintegration.^[1]

Mission insignia

Francis R. "Dick" Scobee asked Kennedy Space Center engineer Ernie Reyes to design the mission patch seen above to represent the mission STS-51-L. In it, Challenger is depicted launching from Florida and soaring into space to carry out a variety of goals. Among the prescribed duties of the five astronauts and two payload specialists (represented by the seven stars of the U.S. flag) was observation and photography of Halley's Comet, backdropped against the U.S. flag in the insignia. Surnames of the crew members encircle the scene, with the payload specialists being recognized below. The surname of the first teacher in space, S. Christa McAuliffe, is followed by a symbolic apple.^[12]

References

^ ^a ^b "STS-51L Mission Profile". NASA. December 5, 2005. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved December 1, 2023. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^ Mullane, Mike (2006). Riding Rockets. Simon and Schuster. pp. 204–205. ISBN 978-0-7432-7682-5.
^ "S. Christa Corrigan McAuliffe" (PDF). Biographical Data. NASA. April 2007. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 27, 2023. Retrieved January 27, 2022. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^ "STS-51L". Spacefacts. Archived from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
^ "Rogers Commission, Vol. 4 Part. 7". Rogers Commission. Archived from the original on December 8, 2022. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^ Kerwin, Joseph P. (July 28, 1986). "Challenger Crew Report". NASA. Archived from the original on December 1, 2023. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^ "Shuttle explodes; crew lost". Daily Leader. No. 214. Frederick, Oklahoma. United Press International. January 28, 1986. pp. 1, 5 – via Google News.
^ Isikoff, Michael (March 10, 1986). "Remains of Crew of Shuttle Found". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 7, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2009.
^ Harwood, William. "The Fate of Challenger's Crew". Space-Shuttle.com. Archived from the original on May 31, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2011.
^ Binkowski, Brooke (February 22, 2001). "Fact Check: Are These the Final Words of the Challenger Crew?". Snopes.com. Archived from the original on June 11, 2023. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
^ Jensen, Claus (1996). No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative about the Challenger Accident and Our Time. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-12036-8. OCLC 33078775.
^ Thomas, James A. (Gene) (2006). Some Trust in Chariots: The Space Shuttle Challenger Experience. Xulon Press. p. 197. ISBN 1-60034-096-2.

External links

"Rogers Commission Report on the Challenger accident" (PDF). June 6, 1986. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 13, 2023.
"Sparton 203". Gunter's Space Page. Archived from the original on December 25, 2022.

[Mission_Archives-1] "STS-51L Mission Profile". NASA. December 5, 2005. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved December 1, 2023. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

[2] Mullane, Mike (2006). Riding Rockets. Simon and Schuster. pp. 204–205. ISBN 978-0-7432-7682-5.

[PayloadSpecialist-3] "S. Christa Corrigan McAuliffe" (PDF). Biographical Data. NASA. April 2007. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 27, 2023. Retrieved January 27, 2022. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

[spacefacts-sts51l-4] "STS-51L". Spacefacts. Archived from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved February 26, 2014.

[rogers-vol4-part7-5] "Rogers Commission, Vol. 4 Part. 7". Rogers Commission. Archived from the original on December 8, 2022. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

[kerwin-letter-6] Kerwin, Joseph P. (July 28, 1986). "Challenger Crew Report". NASA. Archived from the original on December 1, 2023. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

[daily-leader-7] "Shuttle explodes; crew lost". Daily Leader. No. 214. Frederick, Oklahoma. United Press International. January 28, 1986. pp. 1, 5 – via Google News.

[wp_remains-8] Isikoff, Michael (March 10, 1986). "Remains of Crew of Shuttle Found". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 7, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2009.

[Crew_Fate-9] Harwood, William. "The Fate of Challenger's Crew". Space-Shuttle.com. Archived from the original on May 31, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2011.

[Crew_Alive_During_Fall-10] Binkowski, Brooke (February 22, 2001). "Fact Check: Are These the Final Words of the Challenger Crew?". Snopes.com. Archived from the original on June 11, 2023. Retrieved December 1, 2023.

[No_Downlink-11] Jensen, Claus (1996). No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative about the Challenger Accident and Our Time. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-12036-8. OCLC 33078775.

[12] Thomas, James A. (Gene) (2006). Some Trust in Chariots: The Space Shuttle Challenger Experience. Xulon Press. p. 197. ISBN 1-60034-096-2.

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v t e STS-51-L
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
	Main articles	Space Shuttle Challenger Timeline of the STS-51-L mission
	Crew	Dick Scobee Michael J. Smith Judith Resnik Ellison Onizuka Ronald McNair Gregory Jarvis Christa McAuliffe
	See also	Rogers Commission Report Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster TDRS-B Challenger flag Challenger (1990 film) The Challenger Disaster (2013 film) Challenger: The Final Flight (2020 documentary miniseries)

v t e Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099)
Flights	STS-6 STS-7 STS-8 STS-41-B STS-41-C STS-41-G STS-51-B STS-51-F STS-61-A STS-51-L
Status	Out of service - Challenger disaster (destroyed) - January 28, 1986 (STS-51-L)
Related	Rogers Commission STS-61-F STS-61-M Challenger flag The Dream Is Alive (1985 documentary) Challenger (1990 film) When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (2008 documentary miniseries) The Challenger Disaster (2013 film) Challenger: The Final Flight (2020 documentary miniseries)

v t e ← 1985 Orbital launches in 1986 1987 →
January	Shiyong Tongbu Tongxin Weixing 1 Kosmos 1729 Kosmos 1730 Kosmos 1731 USA-15, USA-16, USA-17, USA-18 Kosmos 1732 Yuri 2b Mir / Core Kosmos 1733 SPOT-1, Viking Kosmos 1734 Kosmos 1735 STS-51-L (TDRS-B, SPARTAN-203)
February	Soyuz T-15 Progress 25 Kosmos 1736 Kosmos 1737 Unnamed GStar-2, Brasilsat A2
March	Kosmos 1738 Kosmos 1739 Kosmos 1740 Kosmos 1741 KH-9 No.1220, Pearl Ruby Molniya-3 No.43 Progress 26
April	GOES-G Kosmos 1742 Kosmos 1743 Soyuz TM-1 Kosmos 1744 Kosmos 1745 Ekran No.30L Meteor-2 No.18 Kosmos 1746 Kosmos 1747 Intelsat VA F-14
May	Kosmos 1748, Kosmos 1749, Kosmos 1750, Kosmos 1751, Kosmos 1752, Kosmos 1753, Kosmos 1754, Kosmos 1755 Kosmos 1756 Gorizont No.24L Kosmos 1757 Kosmos 1758 Kosmos 1759 Kosmos 1760 Molniya-3 No.44
June	Kosmos 1761 Kosmos 1762 Kosmos 1763 Kosmos 1764 Kosmos 1765 Kosmos 1766 Kosmos 1767 Molniya-1 No.59
July	Kosmos 1768 Kosmos 1769 Kosmos 1770 Ajisai, Fuji 1a, Jindai Kosmos 1771 Kosmos 1772 Kosmos 1773 Kosmos 1774
August	Kosmos 1775 Kosmos 1776 Molniya-1 No.57 USA-19 Kosmos 1777 Kosmos 1778, Kosmos 1779, Kosmos 1780 Kosmos 1781 NOAA-10 Kosmos 1782
September	Kosmos 1783 Fanhui Shi Weixing 9 Kosmos 1784 Unnamed Kosmos 1785 Molniya-3 No.41 Kosmos 1786 Kosmos 1787 Gran' No.30L Kosmos 1788 Kosmos 1789
October	Kosmos 1790 Kosmos 1791 Kosmos 1792 Polar Bear Molniya-1 No.60 Gorizont No.22L Kosmos 1793 Kosmos 1794, Kosmos 1795, Kosmos 1796, Kosmos 1797, Kosmos 1798, Kosmos 1799, Kosmos 1800, Kosmos 1801 Kosmos 1802 Mech-K No.303
November	Kosmos 1715 Kosmos 1716, Kosmos 1717, Kosmos 1718, Kosmos 1719, Kosmos 1720, Kosmos 1721, Kosmos 1722, Kosmos 1723 STS-61-C (Satcom K1) Kosmos 1724 Kosmos 1725 Kosmos 1726 Gran' No.29L Kosmos 1727 Kosmos 1728
December	Kosmos 1803 Kosmos 1804 USA-20 Kosmos 1805 Kosmos 1806 Kosmos 1807 Kosmos 1808 Kosmos 1809 Kosmos 1810 Molniya-1 No.62
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).