NASA confirms discovery of Challenger wreckage on ocean floor

• A piece of the space shuttle Challenger has been found off the coast of Florida.
• The Discovery was made by a TV crew looking for World War II wreckage.
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A TV crew looking for the wreckage of a plane from World War II found a piece of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded in 1986 and killed all seven people on board, including a school teacher.

Divers saw a large “human-made” object on the seafloor that was partly covered by sand.

Due to the item’s closeness to the US Florida Space Coast and the fact that it was made of modern materials and had 8-inch square tiles, the documentary team called NASA, which confirmed the find.

“While it has been nearly 37 years since seven daring and brave explorers lost their lives aboard Challenger, this tragedy will forever be seared in the collective memory of our country. For millions around the globe, myself included, January 28, 1986, still feels like yesterday,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

In a statement, he said, “This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us.”

On November 22, the History Channel will air a documentary about the latest find on the Challenger.

Francis R. “Dick” Scobee was in charge of the last Challenger mission, which was called STS-51L, and Michael J. Smith was the pilot.

Mission specialists Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Judith A. Resnik, as well as payload specialist Gregory B. Jarvis and teacher S. Christa McAuliffe, made up the rest of the crew.

After 73 seconds in space, Challenger and the seven astronauts on board went down because of a major problem.

An investigation by the agency later showed that the O-ring seals in the solid rocket booster segment joints were not as strong as they should have been because of unexpectedly cold temperatures.

The loss of Challenger and then Columbia, which broke up on re-entry over the western US in February 2003 and killed seven astronauts, including Indian-born Kalpana Chawla, had a big effect on how NASA thinks about safety.

NASA made an Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, came up with new ways to evaluate risks, and set up a place where anyone could talk about safety concerns.

The agency also created the Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program to share these lessons within the agency and with other government, public, business, and international audiences.

“Challenger and her crew live on in the hearts and memories of both NASA and the nation,”  said Janet Petro, the director of the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA is thinking about what else it could do with the artefact to honour the Challenger astronauts who died and their families.

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