When four NASA astronauts blasted off on Artemis-2, something was trending on the social media platform Bluesky. It was called "Challenger trauma." People posted about witnessing the 1986 space shuttle Challenger accident and how they felt a visceral sense of unease as Artemis lifted off from the launch pad. The four astronauts blasted off on a rocket built here in Alabama. The investigation into the loss of Challenger focused on a statement witnesses say was made by a manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. APR news looked at the Alabama connection to NASA's first space shuttle accident as seen by its youngest witnesses.
“I'd like to introduce Mr. Larry Malloy, who is the project manager of the solid rocket booster at the Marshall Space Flight Center,” said Jesse Moore. He was NASA Associate Administrator. The date was February twenty eighth, 1986.
“Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, as Mr. Moore has stated, I intend to give you a briefing on some aspects of the solid rocket booster assembly the assembly, the details of that solid rocket booster, and then concentrate with a bit of information on how the solid rocket motors are assembled, how they are refurbished, and the particularly on the seals and the joint is,” said Mulloy. He ran the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket booster program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
His testimony that day was before the Roger’s Commission. That panel was investigating what happened just one month before…
At 11 am on January 28, 1986, NASA was forty minutes away from its first space shuttle disaster. Challenger was on the launch pad for the last time.
‘It was very cold, which we're not used to,” said Jennifer Eschen Carter. She lives in Atlanta where she works for an accounting firm. Carter was talking about a three hour long school bus ride that cold morning, forty years ago.
“We don't have a lot of clothing in Florida, right? That's usually suitable for 27 degrees. I know, I remember we were all freezing, you know, the bus, I don't remember it being heated, right,” she recalled.
Carter and her classmates were on their way to Kennedy Space Center for the liftoff of space shuttle Challenger on mission 51-L. They didn’t think they were going to make it. But, their bus rattled up the main gate of NASA’s launch site just in time.
“You know, when you're nine, the concept of death you understand, but the concept of such a tragedy really is something that's not easy to digest,” said Carter.
“Okay, how about you, young man, what's your name,” I asked one of Carter’s classmates back in 1986.
“Robbie Sampson,” the young man responded.
“Robbie,” I asked. “Did you know that anything was wrong when you noticed the shuttle go up?”
“Yes, because when I saw the two boosters sort of meet together, it's I sort of felt that there was something wrong, especially when there was that big cloud of smoke,” he responded
“Oh, yes, I remember Robbie,” Jenny Eschen Carter responded during our recent interview from her home in Atlanta.
“He was, obviously, he was also kind of a space guy, a nerd, not a nerd guy. I don't want to say, you know, but I call myself a nerd. I'm space nerd, so, you know, but interested in this, like, and I remember, I remember Robbie,” she recalled.
Jenny remembers Robbie because she was there, too.
Okay, how about you, young lady,” I asked in 1986. “What's your
name?”
“Jennifer Eschen,” she responded at the age of nine.
“Okay, Jennifer, did you expect anything like this? When you came over to watch the shuttle going,” I asked.
“No,” she responded.
“What were you expecting?” I inquired further.
”I was expecting a safe trip, because I always thought it was very exciting to have a teacher in space,” Carter responded back then.
Challenger was my first story about the space shuttle program. Robbie and Jenny were among the first interviews I did that day. I still had the original tape for forty years later when I spoke with her in Atlanta…
“And so, yeah, so I think we obviously knew something was wrong,” said Carter as an adult. “Boosters, big plume of smoke. Everyone's upset. They closed. The Cape said, Get out of here, leave so we knew something bad had happened. We, I don't think it had any idea how bad.”
After that, Manning and her students made their way home and I drove to the Kennedy Space Center press site next to the box shaped vehicle Assembly Building. The first NASA representative I spoke with was George Diller.
“Is there any chance they (the astronauts) survived?” I asked.
“I guess we don't know,” Diller responded. “Because until we know what exploded, we don't know how, how that has damaged the Orbiter. What we'll be watching now is the Now is the investigation, which will begin to form on what happened. Our first actions have already occurred here at the Cape, and that is to impound the data that occurred during the countdown.”
The day of the explosion, even NASA wasn’t sure what happened to the astronauts. That uncertainty also followed Jenny Eschen Carter and her classmates as they headed home.
“I think it took even longer to get back because of traffic and, I mean, just spent hours on a freezing bus with no information, you know,” she said.
Carter says all they knew was that something went wrong.
“And the teachers just trying to, you know, dial into a an AM/FM station to get any any information,” Carter said of the trip home. “And I don't remember there being I don't remember them telling us if they knew, of course, they did not tell us on the bus what had happened, but I don't think they knew. And if they did know, they didn't know for sure.”
1986 was a time before the internet, before cell phones. So, there was no texting, no phone calls from the bus carrying Jenny Eschen Carter and her classmates. She says all her parents had was the news on television, which showed the explosion of Challenger again, and again, and again.
“They're like the shuttle exploded. Did it all fall down on everybody? I mean, didn't were if there anybody that was hurt on the ground. I mean, they had no idea, and then I just walked in. I mean, the bus eventually dropped me home around dinner time, and they they went crazy. And then that was that was upsetting too, right?” she said.
Four months later recovery ships with cranes located most of Challenger’s wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic near the Florida coast. In April of 1986, NASA brought it here. I was among the first group of reporters taken by bus to a hangar at the Kennedy Space center. The first thing I saw was Challenger’s tail rudder strapped down on a flat bed truck. The top of the fin looked okay. The bottom was tore metal and dangling cables.
“The orbiter is been laid out on four foot grid squares that you can see the yellow lines on the floor here,” said Terry Armentrout with the National Transportation Safety Board in 1986.
“The mock up is, as I said over there, full scale. However, it should be clear to you that this particular building isn't quite large enough to carry the full footprint of the orbiter itself. So that's why I use the term modular mock up,” he added.
In 1986, the loss of Challenger was treated as an aircraft accident. That’s why Terry Armentrout and the NTSB was in charge.
“And then you can see the payload bay,” Armentrout went on. “The saw the vertical side walls of the payload bay are mocked up in a vertical position. The skin that you see immediately behind me here is that of the mid body. That's the mid body belly skin of the payload bay area. When we get around to the side or the peripheries during this walk through, you'll see the payload bay doors.”
The mid body of the shuttle is the side of the spacecraft between the nose and tail. The words United States were still clearly visible on that part of the wreckage. Investigators laid out parts of Challenger’s remains to try to confirm what caused the accident. They weren’t the only ones looking for answers
“So there was that little fire, again, a nine year old, a little fire next to a gas tank,” said Jenny Eschen Carter during our recent interview.”
Forty years after the Challenger accident, Carter recalled how she and her classmates, all around the age of ten tried to make sense of what happened.
“And so, right? So I can't comprehend that, right? You know, like there was fire next to a gas tank and that caused the explosion. Now, as to how the fire happened, wasn't until, again, I feel like decades later, right?” she said.
“The evidence that this outer surface here was still together with the crew vessel as it hit the water and it broke away upon impact from the crew vessel,” said Terry Armentrout of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Back at the hangar containing Challenger’s wreckage, perhaps the most poignant answer from Armentrout was about the wreckage that formed the underside of the shuttle’s nose.
“There is evidence that that in this outer shell has been which has been explained before, that the damage that we see would it from from past experience, would indicate that we had some mass within this outer shell,” he said.
That’s as close as Armentrout came to saying that the crew cabin with the astronauts inside was still cradled inside this part of the wreckage when it hit the water…
Two months later the Rogers’ Commission released it’s report. Much of the criticism was aimed at Lawrence Mulloy of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The head of the solid rocket booster program at Marshall denied making the statement “my god Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, April?” which reportedly contributed to Challenger’s ill fated launch. Instead, Mulloy said he was voicing concerns that engineers at Thiokol were trying to make a last minute change to rules governing whether to launch a shuttle.
NASA made changes in how to ran the space shuttle program with Astronauts having more say into what went on. The goal was to try to avoid the kind of space disaster witnessed by those school students from Dade City Florida forty years ago.
Okay, how about you, young lady, I'll start with you," I said back in 1986. "First of all, could you, could you tell me your name?
"Jennifer Golden," she responded.
"All right, Jennifer," I continued. "What did it look like?
"Well, it was just a big thing of smoke, and then all of a sudden it was real bright, and there was a big thing of smoke. They just went off in two directions, and then you couldn't see anymore. It was, there was you could tell that there was a problem," she said.
“Yes, Jennifer Golden and I, same thing. She was also in fifth grade," recalled Jenny Eschen Carter. She says after Challenger, she and Jennifer Golden grew up together.
"We were cheerleaders together, you know, obviously went all the way through high school together,” Carter said.
The two girls also had Challenger in common. Now, forty years later Carter sounds bitter
“I got really angry, and honestly, I kind of liken it to Chernobyl as far as how the what 'group think' does, the disaster that was waiting to happen and that several People knew it sounds like was going to happen and was very possible, and that they were more worried about the optics of delaying the launch again. It was very upsetting," she said.
The Roger’s Commission ordered changes to how NASA ran the shuttle program with astronauts more in charge. During CNN’s report, one Apollo veteran who walked on the moon spoke out. He was Alan Bean.
Bean flew on Apollo 12. Bean was the fourth man to step onto the lunar surface. Except, Bean wasn’t supposed to be there. The man who was assigned to make that moonwalk was from Mobile, Alabama. The story of astronaut Clifton Williams is next time.
