January 28, 1986
Challenger
Seventy-three seconds after launch, on a cold Florida morning
Died that day
7They were at work, or on their way, or had gone in after somebody.
Christa McAuliffe
Ellison Shoji Onizuka
Francis Scobee
Gregory Jarvis
Judith Resnik
Michael John Smith
Ronald McNair
It was the coldest launch morning in the programme's history. The rubber seals in the right solid rocket booster were not rated for it and the engineers who said so were overruled the night before.
Seventy-three seconds after lift-off the vehicle broke apart. The crew cabin stayed intact and fell for two minutes and forty-five seconds. At least three of the emergency air packs had been switched on.
Aboard were Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe - a high school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, chosen from eleven thousand applicants to teach two lessons from orbit. Because of her, schoolchildren all over the country were watching it happen.
The President cancelled the State of the Union. It is one of the days Americans of that generation can tell you where they were standing.