Word: crewed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...progress is one of a struggle against all odds. We learned again that this America was built on heroism and noble sacrifice. It was built by men and women like our seven star voyagers, who answered a call beyond duty." After paying individual tributes to each member of the crew, the President declared, "Dick, Mike, Judy, El, Ron, Greg and Christa--your families and your country mourn your passing. We bid you goodbye, but we will never forget...
...preparation for Challenger's tenth journey into space had been painstakingly careful, and for its crew, agonizingly slow. It was an aptly all-American group: two women, a black, a Hawaiian of Japanese descent and three white men. The mission had originally been scheduled to lift off Jan. 20 from NASA's Pad 39-B, which had been refurbished after standing idle since an American crew aboard Apollo 18 left it to dock with a Soviet spacecraft ten years ago. The date slipped to Saturday, Jan. 25, after one of the other three space shuttles, Columbia, ran into delays with...
When Saturday dawned, Challenger's crew learned that a dust storm had developed across the Atlantic at an emergency landing facility near Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Under NASA's tight safety rules, a shuttle cannot go up unless it has a place to land if something goes wrong before it reaches orbit. Such facilities have never been needed, but every risk had to be minimized. Challenger's crew would have to wait another 24 hours...
Monday looked much better. For the second time, the crew members settled into their couches on the orbiter's two decks, just ahead of Challenger's cargo bay. Commander Dick Scobee and Pilot Michael Smith were strapped into the flight deck; behind them were Judith Resnik, an electrical engineer, and Ronald McNair, a physicist. On the middeck below were Ellison Onizuka, an aerospace engineer; Gregory Jarvis, an electrical engineer; and McAuliffe. Lying on their backs, they could see a bright blue sky ahead of them. The countdown reached T (for takeoff) minus nine minutes--and stayed there for four hours...
That night, temperatures fell to an unseasonable 27 degrees , but the wind dwindled to 9 m.p.h. On Tuesday, Jan. 28, the clear morning sky formed what glider pilots fondly call "a blue bowl." Even before Challenger's crew, wearing gloves against the chill, crossed the access arm to take their assigned places, NASA's "ice team" had inspected the shuttle and its towering gantry. They decided that there was no danger of any icicles breaking away on lift-off and harming the heat-shield tiles. Just 20 minutes before the scheduled lift-off, they made another check. A Rockwell engineer...