The exact timing of the deaths of the crew is unknown but several crew members are thought to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft. The crew compartment and many other fragments from the shuttle were recovered from the ocean floor after a three-month search-and-recovery operation. Following the explosion, the orbiter, which included the crew compartment, was broken up by aerodynamic forces. This led to the breakage of the right-hand SRB's aft attachment, which caused it to crash into the external tank, which caused a structural failure of the external tank and an explosion. The broken seals caused a breach into the joint shortly after liftoff, which allowed pressurized gas from within the SRB to leak and burn through the wall to the adjacent external fuel tank. The record-low temperatures of the launch reduced the elasticity of the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal the joints. The disaster was caused by the failure of the two redundant O-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB). The spacecraft disintegrated above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. The crew was scheduled to deploy a communications satellite and study Halley's Comet while they were in orbit. The mission, designated STS-51-L, was the tenth flight for the Challenger orbiter and twenty-fifth flight of the Space Shuttle fleet. It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft in flight. ![]() ![]() The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was a fatal incident on January 28, 1986, in the United States space program where the Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist, teacher.
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