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The Space Shuttle mission, named STS-51-L, was the twenty-fifth Space Shuttle flight and the tenth flight of Challenger. [3]: 6 The crew was announced on January 27, 1985, and was commanded by Dick Scobee. Michael Smith was assigned as the pilot, and the mission specialists were Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Ronald McNair.
STS-51-L was the disastrous 25th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the final flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. It was planned as the first Teacher in Space Project flight in addition to observing Halley's Comet for six days and performing a routine satellite deployment.
After the accident, NASA attempted to aim at a more realistic shuttle flight rate: it added another orbiter, Endeavour, to the space shuttle fleet to replace Challenger, and it worked with the Department of Defense to put more satellites in orbit using expendable launch vehicles rather than the shuttle. [21]
The space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, a tragedy that hit close to home in Akron, which lost city native and astronaut Judith Resnik.
Space shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute after liftoff in 1986, killing all seven crewmembers, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
“NASA leaders recently viewed footage of an underwater dive off the East coast of Florida, and they confirm it depicts an artifact from the space shuttle Challenger,” the space agency announced.
The Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off on STS-51-L at an altitude of 15 kilometers (49,000 ft). The investigation found that cold weather conditions caused an O-ring seal to fail, allowing hot gases from the shuttle's solid rocket booster (SRB) to impinge on the external propellant tank and booster strut.
The space shuttle Challenger exploded, live on television, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1986.