AccuWeather founder Dr. Joel Myers reflects on weather's role in the Challenger disaster in his book

AccuWeather founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers has released a full chapter from his book "Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shared History" to help mark the 39th Anniversary of the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster that took place on January 28th, 1986.

This chapter from Dr. Joel N. Myers debut book, "Invisible Iceberg: How Climate and Weather Have Shaped History" has been reprinted here with permission from Skyhorse Publishing.

Record Cold in Florida Leads to Challenger Disaster (Chapter 46)

The loss of the Challenger space shuttle shortly after takeoff was a national trauma. It was the first time the United States had lost a launched space vehicle with a crew on board. What made the event hit home was that NASA had arranged for students to watch a special broadcast of thirty-six-year-old Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, making her way into the cosmos where she was to teach classes. McAuliffe had been chosen to represent the people, a non-astronaut that everybody could identify with, and to bring back some of the awe of space travel.

“[The disaster] was even more shocking because Christa McAuliffe was not a professional astronaut,” former astronaut Leroy Chiao told Space.com. “If you lose military people during a military operation, it’s sad and it’s tragic, but they’re professionals doing a job, and that’s kind of the way I look at professional astronauts. But you’re taking someone who’s not a professional, and it happened to be that mission that got lost—it added to the shock.”

Contrary to popular belief, not many Americans saw the events unfold on live television. The Challenger launched at 11:39 a.m. on a Tuesday when most people were at work. CNN existed in those days, but did not have a large audience, and the major networks all cut away when the shuttle broke apart. Unfortunately, the ones who did see it live were mostly the school children who were watching the video feed in their classrooms. That evening, images of McAuliffe’s proud parents, decked out in “teacher in space” buttons watching from the viewing area as the shuttle split apart, ran over and over on the nightly news.

The reaction to the tragedy was such that President Ronald Reagan postponed the annual State of the Union address to address the nation about the Challenger.

Space flights have been taking off from Florida since 1950. The state has clear advantages over the previous launch site at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. First, it is near the ocean, and in the event of any problems, a rocket could be brought down over the ocean instead of crashing down over inhabited land.

Florida is also closer to the equator than most of the continental United States, which allows NASA to take advantage of Earth’s natural rotation, giving rockets an extra boost and saving on fuel.

The climate has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the main disadvantages is lightning. Florida has the most thunderstorms of any state in the union. Rockets are essentially giant lightning rods. Not only do their metal skins conduct electricity, but they can actually trigger lightning strikes as they shoot straight up through the rapid changes in the ambient atmospheric electrical field. The long plumes of ionized gases they trail create the perfect conditions for lightning. Had lightning been detected within five miles of the launch pad, NASA safety regulations would have required that the launch be delayed. But lightning was not the problem in January 1986. The problem was cold.

The launch site at Cape Canaveral in Florida is normally temperate in winter with average lows in January falling only to 47°F/8°C. On January 28, 1986, the morning temperatures were 28°F/-2°C. (This was not the lowest temperature ever recorded for Cape Canaveral, however. The coldest weather ever officially recorded there was 19°F/-7.2°C, which had previously been reached twice, January 26, 1905 and January 22, 1985, and would again be reached on December 23, 1989. Melbourne and Orlando, Florida had each reached lows of 26°F/-3.3°C on January 28, 1986, which was a record for that date for each of the cities.) The Challenger had been sitting on the launching pad for thirty-eight days prior to launch and it had been rainy. Some of the engineers from Morton Thiokol who manufactured the solid rocket booster were concerned that the combination of moisture and freezing temperatures could cause a rubber motor seal to fail. The O-rings kept hot gases from blowing out of the seals between the sections of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. During a shuttle launch the previous year, hot gases had breached one of the booster’s primary O-rings. Only a secondary ring kept the gas from escaping.

The managers at Morton Thiokol, after listening to the engineer’s warnings, recommended that the launch be delayed, but only by two hours. At 11:38 a.m., the temperature had climbed to 36°F/2.2°C, 15°F lower than the previous coldest launch, but still above freezing. The shuttle carrying McAuliffe and her crew mates—Richard Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNari, Judy Resnick, Ellison Onizuka, and Gregory Jarvis— was launched on time.

Just as the engineers had feared, moisture had gotten into the O-rings on a seal in the shuttle’s right solid-fuel booster and froze, making it unable to contain the hot gasses.

The ring and its backup failed, causing the tank to fall apart and release a flood of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. From the ground the fireball it created looked like an explosion. The crew cabin remained intact and briefly continued upward. The crew probably survived the initial incident, but could not survive the loss of cabin pressure and oxygen or the impact with the ocean at more than 200 mph. The solid rocket boosters, no longer held together, flew off in various directions until they were destroyed by the Air Force.

In the bleachers where friends had gathered to watch the launch, there was silence and confusion. “Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation,” came a voice over the speaker. “Obviously a major malfunction.”

In the aftermath of the disaster, NASA changed a number of its processes. It redesigned the rocket boosters, installed a new crew escape system, and adopted stricter weather criteria for launches. It was another three years before manned space flight resumed with the launch of Discovery on September 29, 1988.

You can purchase "Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shaped History" from  Amazon.com.

"Copyright 2024 Dr. Joel Myers. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

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