Educator Astronaut Project
Videos
The Educator Astronaut Project is a NASA program to educate students and spur interest in science, technology, engineering, math, and space exploration. It is a successor to the Teacher in Space Proje
Educator Astronauts Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenberger, Richard Arnold, and Joseph Acaba during a microgravity flight
On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated about 46,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, off the c
Challenger's solid rocket boosters fly uncontrollably after the breakup of the external tank separated them from the shuttle stack. The remains of the orbiter and tank leave thin white trails as they fall toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Space Shuttle Challenger – assembled for launch along with the ET and two SRBs – atop a crawler-transporter en route to the launch pad about one month before the disaster
Cross-sectional diagram of the original SRB field joint. The top end of the lower rocket segment has a deep U-shaped cavity, or clevis, along its circumference. The bottom end of the top segment extends to form a tang that fits snugly into the clevis of the bottom segment. Two parallel grooves near the top of the clevis inner branch hold ~20 foot (6 meter) diameter O-rings that seal the gap between the tang and the clevis, keeping hot gases out of the gap.
STS-51-L crew: (back) Onizuka, McAuliffe, Jarvis, Resnik; (front) Smith, Scobee, McNair.