![]() Having said this, when tested to 140 percent of its design strength in Lockheed’s Plant 42 rig almost a decade earlier, that same cabin had proved to be extremely hardy, and certainly its wreckage showed little evidence of having experienced an explosive depressurization. In his 2006 memoir, Riding Rockets, astronaut Mike Mullane expressed fervent hope that the explosive burn of the External Tank’s propellants had been enough to completely destroy Challenger’s crew cabin, or at least breach her flight deck windows, thereby causing a rapid depressurization and a mercifully rapid death. In the case of the 51L remains, apparently, even dental records were insufficient for positive identification. Indeed, in the months after the disaster all astronauts were required to submit a clip of hair and a footprint to NASA for identification. Veteran astronaut Mike Coats-later to serve as Director of the Johnson Space Center from 2005-2012-was among the first to examine the wreckage, and he described it as resembling “aluminum foil that had been crushed into a ball.” It contained the remains of the crew, but their horrific condition could be guessed from pathologists’ difficulty in identifying them: a few strands of Judy Resnik’s hair and a necklace were all that was left of Mission Specialist Two. Navy spokesperson Deborah Burnette told a Washington Post journalist that “we’re talking debris, not a crew compartment, and we’re talking remains, not bodies.” The last vestiges of Challenger lay in 100 feet (30 meters) of water, about 16 miles (27 km) northeast of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and their discovery would help to unlock many of the mysteries of what happened on the tragic morning of 28 January, when America’s dreams of space exploration were cruelly shattered in the Florida sky and on millions of television screens around the world. “The fractures examined were typical of overload breaks and appeared to be the result of high forces generated by impact with the surface of the water.” U.S. It “was disintegrated, with the heaviest fragmentation and crash damage on the left side,” read the Rogers Commission’s final report into the cause of the disaster. Preserver found the remains of the ill-fated shuttle’s crew cabin. On 7 March 1986, six weeks after the loss of Challenger, divers from the U.S.S. Of all the fragments of Challenger which were recovered, this shard of the craft, bearing part of her name, was particularly poignant. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |