In Memoriam: the Crew of the Shuttle Challenger
28 January 1986: 21 years ago today, the shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven on board:
The crew of STS-51-L. Front row, from left to right: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, and Ronald McNair. Back row, from left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik.
At the time of the Challenger disaster, I was working on a grad school project studying spacecraft glow. In addition to the shock of the loss of the entire crew (the first such loss in the U.S. space program in almost 20 years), our project team didn't know if there'd be any more shuttle launches. We faced the real prospect of the project dying along with the crew and the rest of the space program. President Reagan's tribute to the Challenger crew, and his resolve that NASA would fly again, gave us all a renewed sense of purpose.