STS-51-L

The temperature at the pad on 28 January 1986 was 36 °F — unusually cold for the Florida coast. Space Shuttle Challenger lifted from Kennedy Space Center on the 25th Shuttle mission, with seven aboard. Seventy-three seconds later, an O-ring seal in the right solid rocket booster — its resiliency lost in the overnight cold — gave way; hot gas breached the joint and destroyed the orbiter.

The crew were Commander Francis Scobee, Pilot Michael Smith, mission specialists Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Ronald McNair, and payload specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe — a New Hampshire schoolteacher selected from more than 11,000 applicants to NASA's Teacher in Space program. All seven were killed.

The Rogers Commission found that engineers had raised concerns about cold-weather launches before the flight. The Shuttle program was grounded for 32 months. Challenger's primary payload, the TDRS-B communications satellite, was never recovered.