Space Shuttle Challenger mission

ANON, Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (1986), World Wide Web, http //www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-1/docs/rogers-commission/table-of-contents.html, NASA (1997). 

Facts On January 28, 1986, at 11 38 a.m. EST, the US Space Shuttle Challenger took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Mission 51L. Seventy-three seconds after takeoff, a fire that had broken out on the right solid rocket booster led to an explosion of the adjacent external fuel tank. The shuttle system disintegrated and the orbiter plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean. All seven crew members (Figure 4.6) perished. 

A classic case involves the space shuttle Challenger (McConnell 1987). Conditions encountered on the day of the fatal launch placed the flight into a mission-critical category. System safety analysis indicating that it was likely that a seal problem would result in loss of the mission and space shuttle. Management decided to change the risk category and fly. 

Flight of the space shuttle Challenger on mission 51-L began at 11 38 a.m. (EST) on January 28, 1986. It ended 73 seconds later in an explosive burn of hydrogen and oxygen propellants that destroyed the external tank and exposed the orbiter to severe aerod5mamic loads that caused complete structural breakup. All seven crew members perished. The two solid rocket boosters flew out of the fireball and were destroyed by the Air Force range safety officer 110 seconds after launch. 

A combustion gas leak through the right solid rocket motor aft field joint initiated at or shortly after ignition eventually weakened and/or penetrated the external tank initiating vehicle structural breakup and loss of the space shuttle Challenger during STS Mission 51-L... 

On January 28,1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger, Flight STS-51-L, which came to be known as the Teacher in Space mission, erupted into a ball of flames seventy-three seconds after launch. All seven astronauts on board perished after a descent of the crew compartment that lasted two and a half minutes and ended with an impact at sea at a speed of 200 miles per hour. 

Fig. 2.7 On January 28, 1985, at 11 38 am Eastern Standard Time, Challenger space shuttle left Pad 39B at Kennedy space center in Florida for Mission 51-L, the tenth flight of Orbiter Challenger. Seventy three seconds later the space shuttle was com-...

Figure 4.6. Crew members of NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger, Mission STS-51-L.

January 28,1986, Cape Canaveral, FL. The 0-ring seal in the booster rocket eroded and blow-by burned a hole in the external fuel tank. Suddenly, mission 51 -L exploded before a world-wide audience on live television. The screens in the control room went blank only a white S remained at the top of each mission control monitor screen. Seventy seconds after launch the Challenger space shuttle fell in pieces from 50,000 ft to the ocean below. ... 

A total of 21 shuttle missions were launched from late 1982 to January 1986. Thus, including the initial orbital tests, the space shuttle flew 24 successful missions over a 57-month period. Columbia made seven trips into space, Discovery six, and Atlantis two. Challenger flew most frequently— nine times prior to its fateful last flight. 

In 1984, the AMPTE mission launched the first carbon-foil TOF-MS into space, which would have been the second, had the Challenger shuttle disaster not delayed the Ulysses launch until 1991 (Fig. 11.2) [23]. The photons were filtered out by a traditional blackened deflection system, which directed the ions toward the 2 p,g/cm2 thick foil mounted on an 85% transparent grid almost a square centimeter in area. The grid provided the support needed to survive the launch. The foil thickness permitted >2keV/nuc ions to pass through and hit a SSD some 10 cm away. To ensure that the ions made it through the foil and also through the dead layer on the SSD (caused by the upper electrode), the foil and the entire TOF section were floated at 20 kV to post-accelerate the ions. Electrons sputtered off the carbon foil became the start, whereas electrons sputtered off the SSD became the stop pulse for the TOF. 

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