The Challenger shuttle suffered a booster engine failure some 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986. It then fell apart, killing all seven people on board — Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school teacher, Hughes Aircraft Co. satellite engineer Gregory Jarvis, physicist Ronald McNair, engineers Judith Resnik and Ellison Onizuka, the shuttle’s pilot Michael Smith and the ship’s commander, Dick Scobee.
NASA`s Space Shuttle program was put on hold after the Challenger tragedy. It was resumed in 1988 and ended in 2011.
NASA’s shuttle is the only winged manned spacecraft to have achieved orbit and land, and the only reusable manned space vehicle that has ever made multiple flights into Earth’s orbit.
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