Challenger at 40: The disaster that changed NASA

Forty years ago, Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight, killing its crew of seven and exposing the management culture and decision-making process that led NASA to launch on a freezing January day.

Four decades on, the technical facts that led to the destruction of Challenger are clear. Erosion had been noted in the rubber O-rings that sealed the segments of the twin solid rocket boosters (SRBs) mounted to either side of the Shuttle stack's external fuel tank. The temperature at launch was 36°F (15° colder than any previous launch).

Just after liftoff, the primary and secondary O-rings at the base of the right-hand SRB failed. The Rogers Commission report, an official investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, noted: "At 0.678 seconds into the flight, photographic data show a strong puff of gray smoke was spurting from the vicinity of the aft field joint ...