January 28, 1986, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Space Shuttle Challenger, carrying Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, and Christa McAuliffe, prepares for mission STS-51-L, which primarily consists of launching the TDRS. -B and the SPARTAN-Halley satellites. It’s basically a routine mission, one more flight of the multipurpose space shuttle which long ago and in the days of the race to the moon became NASA’s only space vehicle.

Winters in Florida are usually mild, but the night before launch, when the Challenger is already at its launch site, a chill hits the peninsula and overnight, record temperatures below zero. Since the originally planned January 22nd, several launches have already been canceled and the cold has hit the Atlantic coast. Some engineers are concerned about how the cold affected the O-rings, but the space agency ultimately decided to complete the launch after experiencing various pressures in this regard.

The countdown reaches zero, the propulsion engines are spewing absolute hell and the Challenger slowly begins to climb. Everything seems to have gone well, but shortly after, exactly 73 seconds, and after observing unusual behavior, first the right SRB and then the rest of the ship. disintegrate and their remains fall into the Atlantic Ocean. The whole world sees on television, either at the same time or shortly after, a sequence that remains etched in the collective memory. A space shuttle explodes, killing all seven crew members, and the US space program faces its first loss of astronauts in service since the Apollo 1 fire.

I personally have a memory of seeing those paintings. I had just turned 11 and the accident itself and the impression it made on me, the circumstances under which I saw it, who was with me, etc., were etched in my memory. And I know I’m not the only one, many of the people who saw it 36 ​​years ago, whether they were children, young people or adults, he absorbed the images like kitchen paperin less than a second from the drops of coffee left on the table.

The federal government and NASA, through the President’s Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, popularly known as the Rogers Commission, conducted an exhaustive investigation, the results of which were made public (although NASA’s original conduct was strongly contested in the media in this sense), and which confirmed the worst fears of engineers effect of cold on o-rings. The unusual cold worsened their condition so that they were unable to withstand the enormous effort at launch, setting off a process that first ended the right SRB and then the rest of the ship.

Barely an hour after the accident, when it is safe to sail in the waters where the remains of the Challenger fell, the recovery of both the mortal remains of the crew members and as many parts of the ship as possible begins in the face of the investigation. This process has been extended until May 1when the agency deemed it already had all the necessary material for the investigation, around 15 tons of remains.

From left to right, seven members of the Challenger crew for mission STS-51-L: Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Francis Scobee, Ronald McNair, Michael J. Smith, and Ellison Onizuka.

Now, 36 (almost 37) years later, NASA has confirmed the appearance of much of the Challenger in the waters off the coast of Florida. The piece was found by a team collecting material for a documentary not related to the space shuttle but to the urban legend of the Bermuda Triangle, a production that will be broadcast, at least in the United States, on the History Channel on November 22.

NASA says the team initially thought it was aircraft debris, but its proximity to Cape Canaveral prompted them to contact the US space agency to analyze it to determine whether or not it matched Challenger. In this regard, it is important to remember that there is a federal law in the United States which Prohibits the appropriation of space shuttle debriswhich in any case must be delivered to NASA.

First, the Challenger accident and, a few years later, the Columbia accident in 2003 marked two major blots in NASA’s history, in addition to completely ending the space shuttle program, some ships that are part of the collective imagination. and this, despite its sudden end, lasted for years the insignia of the US space program.