It was a day to remember for all the wrong reasons. On 28 January 1986, NASA’s space shuttle Challenger exploded barely a minute after lift-off, killing all seven crew and the dream of safe and easy space flight.

Thirty years later, that day still looms large in the US psyche and the future of crewed launches from American soil remains uncertain. The damage done to public faith in space travel by the Challenger tragedy and the later loss of Columbia was deep, and the five years elapsed so far since the shuttle’s retirement and a replacement hasn’t helped.

After Challenger, the fleet was grounded for almost three years while a commission investigated the accident’s cause, ultimately determined to be a faulty rubber O-ring sealing the rocket boosters.


When Columbia disintegrated on re-entry in 2003, NASA began planning to retire the shuttle and replace it with something new. Since 2011, the craft have been museum pieces and US astronauts now rely on ageing Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station.

The something new, NASA’s proposed Space Launch System, and the Orion capsule that would sit atop it, have been dogged with continuity issues and safety concerns. The first crewed flights are due in 2021 or 2023. That schedule may slip. Caution is understandable.

So most optimism is focused on commercial projects contracted by NASA to take cargo and crew to the ISS, and this looks to be a critical year for efforts to get humans there on a private flight.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is set for its first uncrewed launch in April. Its Dragon capsule – touted as a potential Mars vessel – and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner are being readied to carry astronauts in 2017. However, there’s reason for caution there too. SpaceX along with another contender, Orbital ATK, have seen high-profile failures in the past 18 months.

But having multiple projects shooting for the stars should help NASA cover gaps left by future snafus. That approach makes sense. In one of the most risky fields of human endeavour, snafus are a certainty.

On 28 January of all days, we should remember that.

Click to watch a rare amateur video of the tragedy.