The Space Shuttle Challenger had its maiden flight in 1983 and exploded three years later. What was the reason?

HISTORY QUESTION #6464

The Space Shuttle Challenger had its maiden flight in 1983 and exploded three years later. What was the reason?

Failure of an O-ring

Explanation

The Space Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia having been the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission on 28 January 1986. All seven crew members died. 18 months later it was established that the disaster was due to the failure of an O-ring on its right solid-fuel rocket booster. Challenger was replaced by the space shuttle Endeavour six years later.

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