1986, January - a ball of fire shot up into the sunny skies over Florida. After a series of successful flights, the Challenger shuttle exploded. 7 astronauts on board the ship were killed. What happened? And why did they ignore the danger warnings?
For the well-coordinated team of NASA scientists and engineers at Cape Canaveral, the morning of January 28, 1986, began with pre-flight chores. Once again, they rechecked the Space Shuttle Challenger for another supposedly routine flight out of the Earth's atmosphere on a reusable spacecraft.
Seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, an elementary school teacher who won the right to participate in space flight in competition with thousands of colleagues across the United States, received final instructions and parting words. Numerous excited spectators and media representatives gathered around the massive launch pad and awaited the thrilling spectacle.
And none of them could even imagine that a few seconds after the start of the impressive rise of the rocket, the incredible Challenger could explode, forming a fiery orange-white ball. All crew members will die, and the US space program will be derailed for three whole years.
In this tragic moment, at an altitude of 9 miles in the blue sky over Florida, the complacent attitude of mankind towards space flights has forever evaporated. The exclamation of one of the spectators sounded to the whole world: “God! What happened?"
Prelude
The story of the "Challenger", which took off into a legend, began the night before, when the temperature in Florida dropped to an unusually low level - minus 27 ° C.
Promotional video:
The next morning, NASA's so-called "ice team" went to work testing the space shuttle for the possibility of potentially dangerous icing. Ice separating during takeoff can damage the Challenger's fireproofing.
Later it turned out that one engineer from the Rockwell company in California, who watched the actions of the "ice team" using a special television installation, called the control commission and insistently began to demand that the launch of the ship be postponed due to the dangerous degree of icing.
The people gathered at the launch site warmly greeted the astronauts on their way to the Challenger, a veteran of shuttle flights. But they knew nothing of the stern warning that had traveled 3,000 miles. The astronauts did not know this either. After taking their jobs, they began to thoroughly check all systems using the on-board computer.
Everything seemed to be well prepared for the mission. The crew was to launch a $ 100 million communications satellite into space and conduct several experiments aboard the ship.
The astronauts were supposed to measure the spectrum of Halley's comet, take samples for radiation in the inner compartments of the spacecraft and study the effect of weightlessness on the development of 12 chicken embryos.
In 7 minutes 30 sec. Before the launch, steel rails were diverted from the shuttle and its huge motors, which cost one billion dollars. The Challenger's external fuel tank was the height of a nine-story building and held over half a million gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. The solid fuel supply of the two launch rockets weighed over one million pounds.
The counting system loudly counted the starting seconds, and people in the crowd repeated them excitedly.
During the launch, Challenger commander Dick Scobie and pilot Michael Smith were on the flight deck. Seated behind them were electrical engineer Judith Resnick and physicist Ronald McNair. Below, on the middle deck, were Cosmonaut Engineer Allison Onizuka, Electrical Engineer Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe.
The main engine was started six seconds before the start. "4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … Start!" Start of the space shuttle and the beginning of its program. After leaving the launch pad, the Challenger rushed into the sky to thunderous applause from the audience.
Among those who watched the spaceship's grand takeoff, leaving a sparkling plume of white smoke in its wake, were the family of Christina McAuliffe and 18 3rd grade students who traveled 1,500 miles from Concorde, New Hampshire to watch their teacher create. history.
After 16 sec. after the launch, the huge ship turned gracefully, heading beyond the earth's atmosphere! The Challenger is accelerating,”the control commission reported exactly 52 seconds later. after launch. "We are going with acceleration," Captain Scobie said over the radio.
After another 3 seconds. NASA's long-range television cameras captured a stunning picture. The operators saw what the audience could not see. In the middle of the ship, between the bottom and the outer fuel tank, a faint but clearly visible orange light appeared. A moment … and the nightmare began. The shuttle Challenger was engulfed in flames … As the hideous Y-shaped cloud spread over the spaceport, the audience felt an inexpressible fear.
Incredibly, in Houston, where the control commission was, the official presenter did not look at the television monitor. Instead, his eyes rested on the flight program. And he was not talking about what had already happened, but about what should have happened to the Challenger in accordance with the flight schedule and the written text.
“One minute 15 seconds. The speed of the ship is 2900 feet per second. Flew a distance of nine nautical miles. Height above ground - 7 nautical miles. " For millions of shocked viewers, his words sounded like an incantation. Suddenly the presenter fell silent and after a minute in a low voice said: “As the flight coordinator just told us, the Challenger spacecraft exploded. The flight director confirmed this message."
In Washington, President Ronald Reagan worked in the Oval Office. Suddenly his closest assistants entered. “There was a serious incident with the spacecraft,” said Vice President George W. Bush. Communications Director Patrick Buchanan was more outspoken; "Sir, the space shuttle exploded."
Reagan, like all Americans, was shocked. After all, it was he who made the decision that the first civilian in space was the school teacher. More than 11,000 teachers competed for this honorary title. McAuliffe was the luckiest one. And so…
A few hours later, Reagan tried to console the saddened country with a heartfelt speech. Addressing America's high school students, the President said: “I know it is very difficult to realize that such bitter things happen sometimes. But all this is part of the process of research and expansion of the horizons of mankind."
National tragedy
The Americans were shocked. Over the past quarter century, American scientists and astronauts have made 55 space flights, and their successful return to Earth was taken for granted. It began to seem to many that in the United States, almost every young person, after training for several months, could fly into space. McAuliffe, a fun and energetic schoolteacher, was to set the benchmark for this new era. It remains only to regret that this wonderful era lasted only a few seconds.
After undergoing a rigorous 3-month training session, the teacher was ready to make her fantastic voyage. She was instructed to conduct two lessons of 15 minutes from space. Television was supposed to broadcast these lessons to the whole world. McAuliffe had to explain to the children how a spacecraft works and talk about the benefits of space travel. To our great regret, she did not manage to use her chance and teach lessons that would go down in the history of enlightenment.
It is unlikely that the tragedy of the "Challenger" somewhere sounded louder than in Concord. After all, there, in the school auditorium, McAuliffe's colleagues and students who knew her well gathered in front of the TV. Oh, how they expected her performance, how they hoped that she would glorify their town all over America!
When the tragic news of the death of the Challenger spread, all of the city's 30,000 inhabitants fell into mourning.
“People froze in place,” said one resident.
"It felt like a family member had died."
Condolences to the people of America were broadcast on Soviet radio. Moscow announced that two craters on Venus were named after two women who died on the American spacecraft - McAuliffe and Reznik.
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II asked thousands of people gathered to pray for the American astronauts, saying that the tragedy caused a feeling of deep sadness in his soul. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sadly noted that "new knowledge sometimes requires the best people to sacrifice."
Senator John Glenn, the first American to be in space orbit, said; “The first of us always knew that someday there would come a day like today. After all, we are working with such tremendous speeds, with such energy that humanity has never encountered."
Across the United States, people have expressed their grief over the victims in different ways. In Los Angeles, the Olympic flame was lit, extinguished after the conclusion of the Olympic Games. In New York, the lights were turned off in the tallest skyscrapers. On the Florida seaside, 22,000 people held lighted torches in their hands …
Why did the disaster happen?
America plunged into mourning. And at Cape Canaveral, teams from the US Coast Guard and NASA have already begun searching for the wreckage of the shuttle.
They had to wait almost a whole hour after the explosion, because all the fragments did not stop falling. The search area covered about 6,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite the enormous force of the explosion, search parties found surprisingly large debris scattered across the ocean floor, including a section of the Challenger's fuselage.
As for the astronauts, after intensive research, NASA experts admitted that the team did not die immediately, as they initially thought. It may well be that they survived the explosion and lived until the cockpit hit the ocean surface. NASA experts faced a daunting task: where did the failure occur?
By that time, three areas of work had emerged. First, scientists already had a film at their disposal, shot by 80 NASA television cameras and 90 cameras that were owned by the media. Second, there were billions of recorded computer signals that the doomed astronauts exchanged with the mission control center. And thirdly, by that time the wreckage of the Challenger had been collected.
There was already speculation that the ice that had formed on the launch pad on the eve of launch damaged the shuttle, which the engineer from Rockwell feared. It was also suspected that a crane boom had accidentally damaged the outer insulation of the fuel tank a few days ago. But NASA experts argued that the crane did not hook on the tank itself, but only the launch equipment.
Soon, versions and assumptions focused on a possible fuel tank accident or on one or both launch vehicles. The experts clarified that each such unit of the complex could cause an explosion. Fuel leakage through the bursting seam of the main fuel tank could also lead to an explosion.
A specially created commission began with partiality to interrogate in closed meetings senior NASA officials and engineers of Morton Tayokol, a supplier of solid propellant launch vehicles, which, presumably, could lead to tragedy.
What turned out shocked the commission. It turned out that Kennedy Space Center shuttle flight manager Robert Syke and Challenger launch director Jean Thomas hadn't even heard that Morton Tyokol engineers objected to the shuttle launch because of the cold weather at Cape Canaveral.
Most of the experts gradually came to the conclusion that the accident was due to the ignition of a synthetic rubber ring that sealed the segments of the launch vehicle. These rings were designed to prevent rocket exhaust gases from escaping through the slots in the joints.
On the evening prior to launch, Morton Tyokol engineers and NASA officials discussed potential flight problems. Engineers unanimously asked to postpone the launch of the Challenger. They feared that the cold rings would lose their elasticity and the density in the grooves around the missiles would be broken. True, it was about a temperature below -50 ° C, and that night the temperature dropped to only -30 ° C. But obviously that was enough.
The controversy threatened to drag on, and then Gerald Mason, the first vice president of Morton Tyokol, said: "We will have to make a management decision." He and three other vice presidents supported the launch. But the head of the company's engineering corps, Allan MacDonald, refused to sign the official permission to launch the ship. “I argued with them hoarsely,” he told reporters. "But I could not convince them."
NASA executives did not seem to be interested in speculation and warnings; they demanded "proof" that the launch could be dangerous. On the other hand, presumably, it asked the engineers: "Lord, when do you want us to launch the ship, in April, or what?" In the end, NASA insisted on its own.
Incredibly, on the day of the launch of the spacecraft, NASA missed another chance to prevent tragedy. The huge tower supporting the aircraft at the launch site was covered with ice. Representatives of the space agency, concerned that the ice could damage the refractory coating, sent an "ice team" three times to check the site. But the information about the abnormal "cold spots" on the right rocket was somehow overlooked. This meant that the rubber rings were subjected to much more cooling than during all previous flights.
Conclusions of the Challenger disaster
In a public hearing at the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space, Senator Ernest Holding said of the disaster: "Today it seems that it could have been avoided." He later brought charges against NASA, which "apparently made a political decision and rushed to launch despite strong objections."
Over time, NASA executives admitted that they had been worried about the condition of the O-rings between the booster sections since about 1980. For example, during the first 12 flights of the shuttle, the rings were partially burned 4 times. The space agency began using a new type of mastic to protect joints. As a result, the rings began to break down even faster. Despite all this, NASA's senior engineers and managers did not consider the seal flaws serious enough to suspend or delay the Challenger's flight.
The safety commission concluded that the tragedy was caused by "a drop in pressure in the aft connection of the starboard rocket engine", but at the same time noted that "a serious mistake was made in making the decision." The commission has developed recommendations that, in its opinion, should not allow a repetition of the tragedy. Her multi-page report to President Reagan urged a complete overhaul rather than modifying the connections on the shuttle's engines and checking all critical components of the shuttle.
It was noted that NASA was very keen to get the spacecraft into orbit as soon as possible due to a series of delays that had occurred earlier. After all, the launch was originally planned for January 25th. But a sandstorm raged over the emergency landing strip in Senegal. Then it rained at Cape Canaveral, which could damage the ship's fireproof insulation tiles. On Monday, the lock of the outer hatch refused. Then the wind, rushing at a speed of 35 miles / hour, pushed the start until morning.
But the commission did not blame the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the tragedy. She noted that a number of flights proposed by NASA were never adequately funded by Washington. Because the budget of the organization was so tight that there was not enough money even for spare parts.
The future is not free of losses …
4 days later, on Friday, the United States said goodbye to the brave seven. Relatives of the victims, congressmen and about 6,000 NASA employees gathered under a gray sky overlooking the space center near Houston, where astronauts trained. President Reagan delivered the speech.
“The sacrifice made by the people you love moved the people of America to the core. Overcoming pain, our hearts opened to the hard truth: the future is not free from losses … Dick, Mike, Judy, Al, Ron, Greg and Christa. Your families and your country mourn your death. We say goodbye to you, but we will never forget you."
The American people will certainly not forget their heroes. The space agency, once a source of national pride, has undergone a lengthy and meticulous overhaul. He was charged with the responsibility of considering all technological and human errors in order to prevent future disasters. In general, the entire shuttle program was revised.
1988, September 29 - The United States breathes a sigh of relief after the successful flight of Discovery. It marked the country's return to space travel with astronauts on board after a nearly 3-year hiatus. Unsurprisingly, while grieving over the collapse of the Challenger, NASA tried to present Discovery to the public as if it were a brand new ship.
According to the engineers' calculations, the new design required a 4-fold increase in the volume of work compared to the base model. From the very beginning of the flights, the location of the main engines in the tail of the shuttle was of particular concern. During the forced hiatus, NASA returned to this question 35 times. NASA engineers have made 120 changes to the orbital design and 100 to its most advanced computer hardware.
However, over the next 3 years, the space shuttle program was weighed down by big and small problems. 1991 - In a report to the White House, the Security Commission indicated that NASA must focus on new targets in line with budget cuts, economic downturns and its own inability.
The report emphatically stressed that the agency should not spend money on the purchase of another shuttle, given that in the past three years the fleet of spaceships has been replenished with the newly acquired Endeavor.
The idea was unambiguously expressed to separate space exploration from television buffoonery. It was suggested not to risk astronauts if robots can do the same job. The agency was told to cut its costs and return to strictly scientific tasks.
In the early 1990s, space shuttle operations were complicated by sudden malfunctions, from computer failures to clogged toilets. And once the entire fleet stood for five months on the ground due to a dangerous fuel leak. Nevertheless, experts argue that shuttles have a significant role to play in the creation of the space station …