CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Wednesday marked 40 years since the space shuttle Challenger disaster that killed seven crew members— a tragedy that changed many people’s lives forever.
The mission was not just to launch satellites but to launch the first teacher in space.
Last week, families of the astronauts lost in the space shuttle accident gathered back at the launch site to mark that tragic day in 1986.
RELATED | How cold weather contributed to the deadly flight
At the Kennedy Space Center memorial ceremony, Challenger pilot Michael Smith’s daughter, Alison Smith Balch, said through tears that her life forever changed that frigid morning, as did many other lives. “In that sense,” she told the hundreds of mourners, “we are all part of this story.”
“Every day I miss Mike,” added his widow, Jane Smith-Holcott, “every day’s the same.”
The bitter cold weakened the O-ring seals in Challenger’s right solid rocket booster, causing the shuttle to rupture 73 seconds after liftoff. A dysfunctional culture at NASA contributed to that disaster and, 17 years later, shuttle Columbia’s.
Kennedy Space Center’s deputy director Kelvin Manning said those humble and painful lessons require constant vigilance “now more than ever” with rockets soaring almost every day and the next astronaut moonshot just weeks away.
Challenger’s crew included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was selected from thousands of applicants representing every state. Two of her fellow teacher-in-space contenders — both retired now — attended the memorial.
“We were so close together,” said Bob Veilleux, a retired astronomy high school teacher from New Hampshire, McAuliffe’s home state.
Bob Foerster, a sixth grade math and science teacher from Indiana who was among the top 10 finalists, said he’s grateful that space education blossomed after the accident and that it didn’t just leave Challenger’s final crew as “martyrs.”
“It was a hard reality,” Foerster noted at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy’s visitor complex.
News4JAX anchor Bruce Hamilton reported the mission ended in tragedy because of a number of failures, some of which were mechanical and also failures in communication.
Even though it happened on Jan. 28, 1986, the lessons that were learned resonate today in 2026.