Word: launching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pound booster, composed of two solid-fuel rocket motors, was believed to be in an area 18 miles northeast of the launch site, where parts of the shuttle's crew compartment, one of its two solid fuel rocket boosters and other debris have been reported...
Recovery of the shuttle's right solid fuel rocket booster is particularly important because speculation about the cause of the explosion currently centers on it. Videotape and still photos taken after launch show a plume of fire shooting out from its side toward the external fuel tank, which blew up into a giant fireball...
Among the hundreds of journalists present at last week's ill-fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger were two veteran TIME space watchers: Correspondent Jerry Hannifin and Photographer Ralph Morse. Between them they have logged nearly six decades covering the U.S. space program. As Morse peered through his telephoto lens at the swiftly rising Challenger, he remarked that the lift-off appeared sluggish. "Don't kid yourself," said Morse. "They're in trouble up there...
Morse, who photographed the launching of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, from Cape Canaveral in 1958, and has been on hand for nearly every manned flight since, vividly recalls the only previous tragedy in the U.S. space program. It occurred in 1967, when an Apollo capsule caught fire on the launch pad, and Astronauts Virgil ("Gus") Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee perished in the inferno. Only the day before, Morse had been shooting aboard their spacecraft, and his photos of the three men lying strapped in their seats were used by NASA to study the accident that killed...
...10th and 20th replay of the shuttle explosion? Because we couldn't pull our eyes away. Not from the fireball, not from the eerie pre-flight scenes of the astronauts, not from the sight of grieving family members confused by the evil twist of emotions in the moments after launch. They couldn't believe it, and neither could we. Still harder to accept is that man's vulnerability was bared by the failure of the Challenger, a technological miracle designed to shield man from the most hostile of elements, and from death itself...