after it lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida,

the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.

As the world watched on live television,

the ensuing fireball plummeted out of the sky

and disappeared into the ocean below.

The loss of the Challenger and its crew, Francis Dick Scobee,

Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair,

Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe stunned the nation

and became a defining moment for a generation of Americans.

Today we're going to take a look at some shocking facts

about the Challenger shuttle disaster.

But before we get started, be sure to subscribe

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Now, let's go back to January of 1986.

Originally built in 1975 as a test vehicle

for the Space Shuttle program, the Challenger

wouldn't be transformed into an actual spacecraft until 1979.

It was first launched in 1983 for the mission

that would entail the program's first spacewalk.

That wasn't the last first the Challenger

would participate in.

It was also the shuttle that carried

the first female American astronaut, Sally Ride,

as well as the first African-American astronaut,

Guion Bluford.

The flight of the Challenger was supposed

to be historic because of one of its crew members, 37-year-old

Christa McAuliffe.

Though she was normally just a social studies teacher

from Concord High School in New Hampshire,

McAuliffe had been selected by NASA's Teacher in Space program

to be the first educator in space.

Designed to inspire children and generate publicity for NASA,

the plan called for McAuliffe to accompany the Challenger

astronauts into orbit and teach a few lessons

while they were there.

Because of McAuliffe's presence, the launch

was heavily covered by the media.

And NASA itself provided numerous schools

with a raw satellite feed.

This meant thousands of schoolchildren,

including those from McAuliffe's own class,

were watching live when the tragedy occurred.

Christa McAuliffe wasn't meant to be the only passenger

on the Challenger who would capture

the attention of children.

NASA also made efforts to get Sesame Street star, Big Bird,

on the shuttle.

They even contacted Caroll Spinney, the beloved actor

who played the giant, yellow muppet about participating

in the mission.

The plan was never approved by mission control.

But in 2015, NASA did confirm that the conversation

with Spinney and the producers of Sesame Street took place.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The pilot for the mission, which was called STS-52-L by NASA,

was Mike Smith.

It was to be the first and last spaceflight of his career.

Smith also holds the distinction of speaking

the last words recorded by any member of the Challenger crew.

Just before the explosion, the shuttle's voice recorder

captured Smith saying, uh-oh, indicating that at least one

crew member knew something was going wrong.

Pilot Mike Smith wasn't the only person

who knew something wasn't right prior to the explosion.

In fact, on the evening before the launch,

a group of engineers from a NASA contractor

called Morton Thiokol tried to convince their superiors

to delay the mission.

A meeting was held where the engineers pointed out

the launch was scheduled to take place

in colder weather than any previous shuttle launch.

This was important because the rubber O-rings, which

sealed various parts of the shuttle,

had frequently failed to perform under chilly conditions.

Sadly, the engineers were overruled by their managers.

One of those engineers, Bob Eberling,

returned from the meeting and told his wife,

it's going to blow up.

Decades later, Eberling would recall

that NASA had their minds set on going up and proving

to the world they were right.

And they knew what they were doing.

But they didn't.

For his part, Eberling would retire after the disaster.

Decades later, he told the media that his decision

to go along with the plans after being overruled

haunted him for the rest of his life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The engineers from Morton Thiokol

were exactly right in their predictions.

The launch proceeded in below freezing temperatures.

And when the shuttle lifted off, the O-ring seal

on the right rocket booster failed.

Heated gas escaped from the rocket

and essentially vaporized the material

connecting the booster to the shuttle's tank.

This created a deadly mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen gas.

And at 46,000 feet, the combination

ignited turning the challenger's fuel tank

into a massive fireball.

Despite this, the solid fuel strap-on boosters

were unaffected and continued to carry the shuttle upwards.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In the immediate wake of the disaster,

it was widely believed that the crew of the shuttle

had died instantly.

However, the evidence would later

suggest a far more disturbing scenario, one which

NASA had attempted to obscure.

The Miami Harold's Tropic magazine

undertook an independent investigation

of the accident which revealed that contrary to early reports,

the shuttle cabin had not depressurized in the explosion.

This means that the crew was likely alive and awake

for the entire three mile descent from the sky

to the Atlantic Ocean below.

This conclusion is backed up by the fact

that several of the astronauts had time

to manually activate their personal emergency air packs.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

While space travel is incredibly dangerous,

prior to the Challenger disaster,

NASA had never lost an astronaut in spaceflight.

In fact, the only previous fatalities

the program had experienced were the deaths

of Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee, Virgil "Gus" Grissom,

and Edward White who all perished in a fire

during a ground test on January 27, 1967.

January 28th wasn't just the day that the Challenger

was supposed to lift off.

It was also the date scheduled for President Ronald Reagan's

State of the Union Address.

However, with the disaster only six hours old,

the president opted to delay the annual speech

and instead personally update the American people

on the tragedy.

The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger

honored us with the manner in which they live their lives.

This speech would be hailed as one of Reagan's greatest,

quite a testament for a man whose nickname was "The Great

Communicator."

Thank you.

The explosion of the Challenger scattered wreckage

over a vast swath of the Atlantic Ocean.

And salvage crews would spend weeks

recovering all of the pieces.

In fact, it would take six weeks until Naval divers finally

located the resting place of the crew cabin

100 feet beneath the water, approximately 15 miles

east of Cape Canaveral.

The remains of the astronauts were recovered.

And those that could be identified

were returned to their families.

Those that couldn't were buried under a monument

at Arlington National Cemetery.

Following the disaster, investigators

determined that NASA had deliberately

violated launch rules.

Engineers had warned their superiors

that it was too cold for the mission to proceed.

And launching in such low temperatures

was against NASA's own procedures.

A former chief scientist at NASA, named Ken Iliff,

later claimed that this failure to observe the rules

was the primary cause of the accident.

So why did NASA ignore the warnings and press ahead?

There were many factors that influenced the launch decision.

But the Rogers Commission noted that in an effort

to speed launch times to meet NASA's goal of 24 missions

a year, the agency had pushed its people and systems

beyond their capabilities.

This drive to achieve more launches

was tied directly to the survival of the Space Shuttle

program as it tried to fulfill its designed intent

as a single-launch vehicle that could serve the nation's

growing commercial, scientific, and military launch

requirements.

The explosion of the Challenger made headlines

throughout the world.

And almost immediately there were calls for the entire Space

Shuttle program to be halted.

This suspension would last three years, during which time

NASA worked to implement the safety

recommendations of a presidential panel called

the Rogers Commission.

The commission, which included high profile astronauts

like Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride,

was formed to help prevent similar disasters

from happening again.

And it mostly worked.

It wouldn't be until 2003 that NASA would experience

another tragic incident.

That time it was the Space Shuttle Columbia

that burned up during reentry.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Debris from the Challenger would continue

to wash up on the coast of Florida

long after the disaster.

For example, in December of 1996,

almost 11 years after the explosion, beach-goers

at Cocoa Beach, over 20 miles away from Kennedy Space Center,

found two large pieces of the shuttle washed up in the surf.

The pieces were so big, NASA had to use a front end loader

to pick them up and move them from the beach.

The death of a civilian, Christa McAuliffe,

was especially damaging to the space program.

And the fallout would last for decades.

In fact, it would be 22 years before NASA

would send up another civilian.

Incidentally, that civilian would

be Barbara Morgan, who was Christa McAuliffe's

backup for the original Challenger mission.

Morgan, who like McAuliffe was a teacher of social studies

and English, joined the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavor

for a successful mission in 2007.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The explosion of the Challenger changed America and its space

program forever.

It would also prove to be an inspiration to artists

who would memorialize the tragedy in sculptures, songs,

and television shows.

One memorable example of this took place

at the Rendez-vous Houston concert

in 1986, where musician, John Michel Jarre,

a friend of Challenger astronaut Ronald McNair,

played a saxophone solo McNair himself intended to play

during the doomed mission.

The track would go on to be sampled in the music of Frank

Turner, Adam Young, John Denver, and even Beyoncé.

The brave, wonderful people who were aboard the Challenger

Space Shuttle.

It's called Flying For Me.

The disaster was also acknowledged

in the scripts of then popular television shows

like Punky Brewster and Star Trek The Next Generation.

We were watching the Space Shuttle take off.

It exploded.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

At the time of its destruction, the Challenger

was carrying more than astronauts

and scientific equipment.

It was also carrying a soccer ball.

Crew member Ellison Onizuka had brought with him

a soccer ball that had once been used

by his daughter, Janelle's, high school soccer team.

The soccer ball miraculously was recovered intact

from the wreckage of the shuttle.

It was returned to Onizuka's daughter who

allowed it to be put on display as a memorial at Clear Lake

High School.

Fast forward 30 years to when Shane Kimbrough,

another astronaut with a daughter who attended Clear

Lake, asked the school if he could take the ball with him

on a mission to the International Space Station.