Essay On Challenger Explosion

The Challenger Explosion and its Effect on the Twenty-first Century On January 28th, 1986, the world experienced one of its most horrific tragedies. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was prepared to launch a shuttle mission. The shuttle that NASA was sending to space was named the Challenger. The Challenger included seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space. The teacher in space program was something that intrigued people in the United States and created a plethora of attention for the program. This attention meant that there were people watching the event all over the country and many were in attendance at the site of the launch. However, just seventy three seconds into the mission the Challenger exploded. The shuttle was 45,000 feet in the air when it exploded and all seven of the crew members on board were killed (Vaughn 13). After the explosion many investigations took place in order to discover the reason behind the shuttle exploding. In the end, the results stated that there were a variety of factors that led to the malfunction. Firstly, there was a fault in one of the parts of the rocket, called the O-ring, which could not work properly in the temperature and weather conditions that day. Secondly, NASA circumvented normal safety checks and launched the shuttle regardless of warnings given about the safety of the shuttle (Carey 87). When the …show more content…
As a result of the explosion, NASA worked hard to change their policies and make the space program as a whole much safer. In the twenty-first century, the increase in technology made space exploration safer, as well as making the daily lives of people