#Nasa space shuttle challenger disaster upgrade#
In the wake of the Challenger disaster and subsequent commission report, NASA invested $2 billion in nearly 400 improvements before the first post-Challenger shuttle flight on September 29, 1988, seeking to upgrade equipment, enlarge its safety corps, and inject new accountability into shuttle management.
Thiokol Corporation, the company that designed the O-ring, first discovered the flaw in 1977 and reported it to NASA, but the commission in charge of the shuttle project ignored the report, even after significant erosion to the O-rings was discovered during shuttle flights in 1981. That caustic observation was sparked by a more alarming finding of the commission: namely, that the safety reporting system at NASA was so weak that the commission termed it "silent", and that the agency's management structure suppressed pre-launch warnings that could have prevented the tragedy. In the commission's final report, Feynman accused NASA of "playing Russian roulette" with astronauts' lives. He dunked a piece of the rocket booster's O-ring material into a cup of ice water, memorably demonstrating how it lost all resiliency at low temperatures and removing all doubt as to the technical cause of the explosion. The highlight of the Rogers Commission hearings was the testimony of Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who, frustrated by witnesses' vague answers and slow bureaucratic procedures, conducted an impromptu experiment that proved key to the investigation. The liquid hydrogen and oxygen mixed and exploded, destroying the shuttle instantly.
#Nasa space shuttle challenger disaster crack#
A jet of hot gas escaped through a crack in the O-ring, piercing the main fuel tank in a fraction of a second. The night before the launch had been a cold one, and frost had formed on the O-ring in question, freezing it and making it brittle. The seals were intended to prevent hot exhaust gases from escaping, but because of a design flaw, they were dangerously sensitive to low temperatures. During Congressional hearings before the Rogers Commission assigned to investigate the tragedy, it was revealed that the technical problem lay with the rubber O-ring seals between the rear-most segment of the shuttle's right-hand solid rocket booster. Investigators viewing slow-motion replays of the shuttle just before the explosion witnessed a jet of flame shooting out of the side of one of the solid rocket boosters, burning straight into the side of the main fuel tank, causing it to explode. As millions of Americans watched, it burst into flames, killing all seven crew members, making it the worst space disaster ever. But a mere 73 seconds into the flight, Challenger made a different kind of history. On January 28, 1986, the nation eagerly awaited the launch of Space Shuttle Challenger, NASA's pride and joy, in an historic flight: its crew included high school teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first non-astronaut citizen to be launched into space. January 28, 1986: The Challenger Explosion and its aftermath.
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