The Challenger Tragedy: 24 Years Later

(Jan. 28) – "Obviously a major malfunction." Those words, spoken by NASA public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt 24 years ago today, signaled one of the worst disasters in the history of American spaceflight: the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger during launch and the loss of all seven members of its flight crew.

On the bitter-cold morning of Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., heading for Earth's orbit, where it was to deploy a series of tracking satellites and carry out several experiments and even broadcast some school lessons from space. Instead, the shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds into flight, shooting a plume of smoke and debris over the Atlantic Ocean.

The acute sense of tragedy felt immediately throughout the nation and across the world that day was compounded by the fact that America's first civilian teacher turned astronaut, Christa McAuliffe, was among the crew members killed. Because of her participation, many classrooms had set time aside for their students to watch the launch on a special live television feed.

"We watched it in middle school," recalls blogger Juan Grande. "It was going to be a 10-minute break to watch the launch. It turned into an all-day marathon of watching the TV, trying to understand what horrible thing had caused the accident."

Indeed, the cause of the disaster – eventually determined to be the mechanical failure of a seal on one of the shuttle's booster rockets – remained a point of controversy for years following the disaster. Specifically, NASA's deliberate obfuscation in the aftermath of the disintegration and during an ensuing federal investigation ballooned into a full-blown public-relations nightmare for the agency.

As writer Dennis Powell put it in the Miami Herald in 1988:

What had begun as an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding a very specific incident had broadened to the point where the space agency's entire decision-making system was under fire. The faulty O-ring design came to be seen as one small symptom of a terrible disease rampant in the space agency. ... Many NASA representatives who testified before the [presidential] commission [were thought to have] lied. NASA employees were repeatedly warned by Chairman William Rogers that they were under oath.

NASA, which had enjoyed a unique and cozy spot in government, almost above question, was now being made out the bad guy. A nation that had endured civil unrest, assassinations and an unpopular and unsuccessful war had been able at least to point to the space program with pride. No more.

Or, as Maggie Koerth-Baker opines at the blog Boing Boing: "What really sticks out for me is finding out, years later, about the mechanical malfunctions that caused the explosion, the bureaucratic mismanagement that [led to known] malfunctions being ignored – and the good, honest people at NASA and contractor Morton Thiokol who tried to make their bosses fix the problem and, after the disaster happened, brought their stories to the public."

Describing the culture of NASA circa 1986, Andrew Chaikin writes that the agency was working at a "breakneck pace," planning to fly the space shuttle every week in order to keep up with a fully subsidized, lower-cost European rocket called the Ariane. The agency's long-term goal was also to begin flying ordinary citizens into space, proving the commercial viability of the shuttle to Congress.

Yet, as Oregon Coast Magazine points out, this ran counter to the space shuttle program's initial founding goal as "a means of reducing the costs of space flights," especially in comparison to the Apollo missions, which discarded expensive rockets after every launch. Unlike other spacecraft, the big advantage of the space shuttle was ostensibly its reusability and low overhead.

"NASA managers were trying to live up to years and years of their own unrealistic expectations, fanciful claims, pure science-fiction and outright lies," True/Slant's Miles O'Brien summarizes.

The agency isn't in much better shape these days: The space shuttle program is set to expire this year, and thus far the Obama administration appears wholly resistant to granting the necessary funding for its long-delayed replacement, the Constellation program, which aims to return Americans to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Without the Constellation, NASA astronauts would have to "tag along on Russian spaceships" or outsource the job to private companies, notes Traci Watson for AOL News. Meanwhile, India and China are locked in their own modern space race.

Update Jan 28: Reports have emerged confirming that Obama will indeed be grounding the proposed moon rocket program and will instead offer NASA $5.9 billion over the next five years to invest in private spacecraft capable only of reaching low-earth orbit, where the International Space Station is located.

Of course, the 24th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy isn't merely a time to consider NASA's future, but ultimately the sacrifices made by the brave men and women who put their lives on the line in pursuit of a nobler cause – advancing science, exploration and education.

As President Ronald Reagan said on the evening of the disaster, in lieu of his State of the Union address: "The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.' ''

Read more Challenger memories and contribute your own online.