She was only 38 when she died. Beautiful, educated, talented …
Christa McAuliffe became famous when, ahead of tens of thousands of teachers from all over the United States, she won the competition of the American aerospace agency NASA and won the right to become the first teacher to teach her lessons directly from space. She did not have time to do this, but her only cosmic lesson remained in the hearts of earthlings forever.
In Houston, where the ship took off, the official presenter did not look at the television monitor. He stared at the pre-written text. At the moment when the stunned viewers saw the explosion on their TV screens, the announcer monotonously commented: “One minute fifteen seconds. The speed of the ship is 2,900 feet per second. He flew a distance of nine nautical miles. The height above the ground is seven nautical miles. " After these words, the host fell silent and after a minute, in a trembling voice, said, “As the flight coordinator just told us, the Challenger spacecraft exploded. The flight director confirmed this message …"
Construction of the space shuttle Challenger began in 1975. The reusable ship ("space shuttle") was named after a British military research vessel of the 19th century. He went on his first space journey on April 4, 1983, after which he made 9 more successful flights. The tenth start on January 28, 1986 was fatal for the Challenger.
On a frosty morning on January 28, 1986, the crew of the space shuttle of 7 people: Commander Dick Scobie and team members Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ellison Onizuk, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe set off on a six-day flight.
The task of the astronauts included measuring the spectrum of Halley's comet, taking samples for radiation in the inner compartments of the spacecraft, and studying the development of twelve chicken embryos in a state of weightlessness.
Close relatives and friends of the astronauts arrived at the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome. After a successful take-off, the festive glee gave way to a nightmare - at 73 seconds of flight, the Challenger exploded in the air. All of America sobbed for the lost heroes, and the whole world mourned.
The reason for the explosion, according to the findings of the investigation, was a defect in the sealing ring on one of the solid-propellant rocket boosters and very cold weather on the day of launch. The shuttle flight program was frozen by NASA for three years.
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At first, it was reported that the team died immediately, during the explosion. But after research, NASA experts admitted that there is a possibility that the astronauts died at the moment when their cabin hit the surface of the ocean.
The explosion was caused by the separation of the left solid propellant booster from one of the two mounts. Turning around the second, the accelerator pierced the main fuel tank. Due to the violation of the symmetry of thrust and air resistance, the ship deviated from the axis and was destroyed by aerodynamic forces. The astronauts were still alive, as the bow, where they were, was torn from the rest of the ship. They immediately rushed to put on oxygen masks, but a fall from a twenty-kilometer height with a huge impact on the water (according to estimates, there was an overload of about 200G) did its dark deed, and all the astronauts on board died.
During the investigation it turned out that frosty weather could have caused the death of the Challenger. It turned out that the day before the launch of the shuttle, engineers of the Mor-ton Tayokol company and NASA employees were discussing possible problems in the upcoming flight. Experts unanimously insisted on the postponement of the Challenger launch. They feared that the rings made of synthetic rubber, sealing the segments of the launch vehicle, would lose their elasticity from the cold, and the density in the grooves around the missiles would be broken. True, it was about a temperature below 20 degrees below zero, and that night it dropped to only 10 degrees below zero.
Morton Tayokol's management decided to support the shuttle launch, ending endless controversy. The head of the engineering corps of the company A. MacDonald, who refused to sign the official permission to launch the ship, then said: "I argued with them until I was hoarse, but could not convince them."
Subsequently, most experts concluded that the accident occurred due to the ignition of those very synthetic rubber rings designed to prevent rocket exhaust gases from escaping through the slots in the connections. After reading the public report for President Reagan, it became clear that the NASA leadership really wanted put the Challenger into orbit. The launch was originally scheduled for January 25th. But the weather constantly interfered with a sandstorm whirled over the emergency landing strip in Senegal, then rain poured down on Cape Canaveral, which could damage the ship's refractory insulation tiles. In addition, the lock of the outer hatch failed. And then the wind blew out at 35 miles an hour and pushed the start until morning.
However, the control commission did not blame the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the tragedy. In conclusion, it was noted that a number of flights proposed by NASA, Washington never adequately funded. The organization's budget was so modest that there was not enough money even for spare parts!
And only in 2003, when the US was again shaken by a terrible tragedy - the explosion of the Columbia spacecraft, NASA carried out a number of official investigations of disasters and emergency situations that had occurred during the entire US space program. From an official NASA statement to the media dated November 5, 2003, the facts regarding the Challenger were made public.
There is a version about the "warning" of the tragedy from alien worlds friendly to us. The data were obtained after analyzing video footage of the Challenger in November 1985, a year before the disaster. In the photograph, astronauts C Nagel (USA) and E. Messerschmidt (Germany) examined the spacecraft's thermoregulation systems. In the background, the "face from Mars" appears well. Experts agree that the "face" that once appeared in the photograph from Mars and the "face" on the Challenger are friendly actions of one of the universal civilizations. Ufologists believe that if the "warning" had been noticed and understood correctly, the catastrophe could have been prevented.