I don’t remember when NASA suffered its most famous and high profile disaster, but my aunt and mother, who both worked in the school system all their lives, remember the horrifying moment.  On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger took off from NASA only to suffer a catastrophic failure of some rubber O-rings and explode in midair.  The memory of the Challenger disaster still haunts Americans who witnessed it 25 years after the fact.

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives,” then-President Ronald Reagan told a grieving nation in 1986.  ”We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ ”

The thing that made the Challenger’s explosion much more devastating to an entire generation is the fact that an entire generation was watching the Challenger’s launch on television at the moment the shuttle blew up.  Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, was set to become the first civilian in space as part of NASA’s Teacher In Space project.  In schools throughout the nation, children were watching as Space Shuttle Challenger took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the order of mission director Francis (Dick) Scobee at 11:38 AM, only to explode in midair, killing all 7 people on board.  McAuliffe’s backup, Barbara Morgan, fulfilled the Teacher In Space mission 21 years later, when she rode the Endeavour to the International Space Station in 2007.

There’s not much you can say about a disaster of this magnitude, but if there’s one positive benefit to it, it’s reminded NASA to continue to keep the safety of the astronauts in its care first, rather than simply keep on pushing rockets through to space.  Well, at least until 2003, that is, when the Columbia disaster happened.  Then again, Columbia is why NASA is pushing to create unmanned space vehicles, so perhaps there can always be good in tragedy.

Tags: NASA, Challenger, Space Shuttle Challenger, Challenger disaster, Challenger explosion, 25th anniversary of the Challenger, Challenger explosion anniversary, 25 years ago the Challenger exploded, Ronald Reagan, Francis (Dick) Scobee, Christa McAuliffe, space shuttle explosion, space shuttle disaster, space exploration, NASA disaster, shuttle disaster shown on live television, Barbara Morgan, Endeavour, Teacher in Space

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