Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the accident which killed all seven crew members. On the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger accident, June Scobee Rodgers _ widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee and longtime spokeswoman for the families of the lost astronauts _ is passing the torch to daughter Kathie.
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Morgan, a retired astronaut and educator who flew a shuttle mission in 2007, discussed what she had learned from each of her Challenger friends, who together with their families showed that “courage is contagious”.
Principal Bill Giese of Sam Davey Elementary School, which sees kindergarteners through sixth-graders, says, “It’s always a juggling act whether it’s appropriate for young students or not, my own teaching experience, the 9/11 explosion, the World Trade Center, I was teaching 5th grade at the time…do you allow children to see and watch and witness this historical event and then balance that with their needs and emotions and those kinds of things”. He was at Kennedy Space Center for Challenger’s launch and had gotten to know not only McAuliffe, but a few of the other astronauts on board the doomed flight. Gregory Jarvis, Mission Spl.
Besides Christa McAuliffe, the Challenger dead include pilot Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Gregory Jarvis.
The crowd numbered close to 400 and included family members of astronauts killed in all three of NASA’s spacecraft tragedies: Challenger; Columbia’s catastrophic descent on February 1, 2003; and the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967. Seven astronauts died in the explosion. NASA also plans observances at Arlington National cemetery, Johnson Space Center in Houston and elsewhere. “It’s in the history books”, Rodgers said.
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Teacher and space shuttle astronaut, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, is shown in an undated official portrait released by NASA. Despite the Florida launch site, temperatures were in the 30s the morning of the launch. The cause of the explosion was discovered to be a combination of the cold weather conditions and a detectable flaw in the O-rings, leading to an examination of “go-fever” and a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program.
