Fire and Ice: Memories of Challenger

Fire and Ice: Memories of Challenger

By Peter Merlin
NASA Dryden History Office
While attending college in Florida in the mid-1980s I had the opportunity to view numerous space shuttle launches, including first flights of Discovery and Atlantis. I’ll never forget the thrill of witnessing spectacular nighttime and early morning liftoffs, the building excitement of the countdown, the startlingly bright flames of the vehicle’s solid-fuel rocket boosters, and the all-penetrating sound as the shuttle breached the heavens.

Unfortunately, images of Challenger’s destruction 25 years ago are also indelibly etched in my mind. This first loss of a shuttle and crew forever shattered the illusion that manned spaceflight had become as routine as traveling on a commercial airplane.

On the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, I joined a throng of tourists and space buffs on a narrow strip of land spanning the Banana River between Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, roughly six miles from the launch pad. Bitterly cold temperatures – it was 36 degrees at launch time – had failed to deter me. The sky was deep blue and cloudless, and I huddled against the chill.

Excitement built in the final moments as the launch announcer called out the countdown. “Ten, nine, eight!” Billowing steam clouds signaled main engine start. “Three, two, one, zero!”

  
People began to cheer as the rocket rose silently into the sky atop a pillar of flame and smoke. It took nearly 10 seconds for the thunderous sound of liftoff to reach the spectators. A distant crackling quickly built to a pulsating roar that shook my bones.

As Challenger soared upward, everything seemed normal. But suddenly, the rocket’s smoke trail blossomed into a brownish-orange ball. The vehicle’s two boosters cut diverging paths across the sky, disappearing seconds later in twin flashes of fiery yellow. Various smaller objects emerged from the expanding cloud, each ascending in a ballistic arc and trailed by a plume of white vapor.

I heard a woman shout, “Look, booster separation!” I knew, however, that it was far too soon for that. At this point in the flight Challenger would have scarcely reached 50,000 feet. “No,” I said to her. “Something is very, very, wrong.”

The NASA public address system had fallen silent so I could only watch and wonder. Not yet grasping the full import of what I had witnessed, I still expected the orbiter to somehow emerge from the cloud and return for an emergency landing in what astronauts call RTLS – a return-to-launch-site abort. The truth gradually dawned as I registered the amount of debris falling toward the ocean.

Challenger’s smoke trail, brilliant white against azure, ended in a twisted mushroom cloud. Small pieces of debris, like a snowstorm of glitter, drifted on the wind for nearly an hour. As my disbelieving eyes scanned the sky for an orbiter that would not return, I saw people pointing in forlorn hope at a white parachute that I recognized as part of a booster rocket. It soon became clear that the crew of seven astronauts was lost.

Over the ensuing months, the nation mourned. Presidentially appointed investigators determined causes and made recommendations. The shuttles eventually returned to flight when Discovery blasted into orbit Sept. 29, 1988.

Since that day, there have been more than 100 successful shuttle missions and one additional fatal mishap, the loss of Columbia and its crew in 2003. As the shuttle fleet approaches retirement in 2011, I feel a sense of awe at all that has been accomplished by the men and women who created, maintained and operated the most complex space vehicle ever built, and I remember those who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of exploration on the final frontier.

Beginnings and Endings

By David McBride
Center Director
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

April 12 is a significant date in space history. On that day in 1961, Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. On that same day in 1981, NASA launched space shuttle Columbia on its maiden voyage into space, marking not only America’s return to space but also the first flight of the nation’s new shuttle transportation system. The shuttle was the first – and so far, only – reusable spacecraft, itself an extraordinary accomplishment. Dryden played a major role in the development of this system.

Image: Space shuttle Columbia comes in for the STS-1 landing at Edwards Air Force Base on April 14, 1981.

Yesterday NASA announced the four locations where the existing orbiters will be put on permanent display once the program draws to a close. It may appear to many as though the shuttle’s retirement means an end to American space-faring, but that is a shortsighted perspective. We took a six-year break between the final Apollo mission and the launch of the first shuttle, during which time no American flew in space. NASA’s current focus is on transferring the space launch business to private enterprise, and during that time we will continue to launch Americans into space in cooperation with our Russian partners.

Through all this, Dryden has remained involved in our nation’s space initiative. It was a pattern that was set in the late 1950s with the X-15 program then continued through the 60s and 70s with the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, lifting bodies, Approach and Landing Tests for the space shuttle, right down through our direct support of the shuttle program as the missions were flown. Our role hasn’t merely been one of support, however; we have been directly involved in aerospace innovation. The first integrated scramjet was demonstrated here, opening new possibilities for access to space, and Dryden plays a central role in the Flight Opportunities Program, which is part of the president’s new plan for NASA. And of course we were the center responsible for testing the Pad Abort system for the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. Even now Dryden engineers are at work on new ways to gain access to space, through research on electromagnetic acceleration down a rail and airborne rocket launches into low-Earth orbit.

We are not done perfecting the science of flight. There are many new discoveries waiting to be made through flight research programs. Just as our predecessors united for a common cause, we, too, are looking ahead, developing next-generation aircraft that are more environmentally friendly and systems that will take us to destinations beyond low-Earth orbit.

As the primary backup-landing site for the shuttle program, we stand ready to support the final two missions. While some hope for a landing at Edwards so they can say goodbye to an old friend, I look for the inspiration to be found in all that we’ve accomplished, and the challenges that lie ahead as we do it all over again.