Twenty-five years ago today and only seconds into their mission, seven NASA astronauts perished in the greatest space disaster ever witnessed.
I remember that I was in either 2nd or 3rd grade. I was home sick from school to watch the shuttle take off. I also remember the minute that it exploded and the reactions on television around the world. I can’t believe that it’s been 25 years!
Where were you on January 28, 1986?
From CBS News:
Just 68 seconds into the flight, Scobee uttered the last words anyone would ever hear from the Challenger crew: “Go with throttle up.”
Bob Sieck, shuttle operations manager at Kennedy Space Center, said, “We knew as soon as we saw the fireball that the explosion that we didn’t have a chance of getting the crew back alive.”
The space shuttle — America’s symbol of technical prowess — was brought down because cold weather had caused rubber O ring seals in the rocket boosters to weaken and fail. Seven people lost their lives — as a nation looked on.
That evening, President Reagan consoled the country, saying, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.'”
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