The Challenger Disaster
The Challenger disaster was when the space shuttle Challenger exploded into a huge, fiery ball seventy-three seconds after launch and killed all 7 crew members on board. It happened on January 28, 1986 off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Challenger exploded due to cold weather messing with one of the solid rocket boosters. This disaster was a devastating event that changed how so many people would look at the space shuttle program forever.
This horrible disaster killed 7 young people who trained for months only to live seventy-three seconds into their flight. The crew had absolutely no idea what horrible thing was about to happen to them. The ship’s crew believed they were stepping into the record books by
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The clean up was the largest surface water search involving the U.S. Coast Guard (Kortemeier 22). The surface water search involved 14 ships and 11 airplanes (Kortemeier 22). It cost NASA $1 million per week for the search (Kortemeier 22). The debris was spread out over an area seven times the size of Washington, DC (Kortemeier 22). The Challenger exploded over the ocean at a height of 46,000 feet in the air (Kortemeier 22). They estimated that about 3 million pounds of remains sank before it could be recovered (Kortemeier 22). They spent a lot of time trying to find the crew compartment and other parts of the shuttle. They found the crew compartment in March of 1986 lying only 100 feet below sea level (Kortemeier 23). Inside they found the seven bodies of the crew (Kortemeier 23). When they hauled the compartment to the surface they lost the body of Gregory Jarvis (Kortemeier 23). It took them five weeks to relocate it (Kortemeier 24). In April they found the boosters (Kortemeier 25). A submarine found them in 600 feet of water (Kortemeier 25). NASA and the U.S. Coast Guard spent a lot of time and money to find and clean up the remains of the