Were any human remains recovered from Columbia?
Were any human remains recovered from Columbia?
The remains of all seven astronauts who were killed in the space shuttle Columbia tragedy have been recovered, US officials said last night. The shuttle was travelling at 18 times the speed of sound, 39 miles above Texas, when disaster struck.
What compensation did the Challenger families get?
$7.7 million
The federal government and Morton Thiokol Inc. agreed to pay $7.7 million in cash and annuities to the families of four of the seven Challenger astronauts as part of a settlement aimed at avoiding lawsuits in the nation’s worst space disaster, according to government documents released yesterday.
What did Morton Thiokol’s Richard Covey say to Space Shuttle pilots?
Watching the launch on television from their firm’s Utah headquarters, a relieved Eberling and other concerned engineers at Morton Thiokol thought they, NASA and the astronauts had dodged a major bullet — until mission controller Richard Covey relayed a command to the soaring shuttle’s pilots to increase power. “Challenger, go at throttle-up.”
What happened to the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986?
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists.
Did Thiokol have concerns about NASA’s launch?
The NASA official simply said that Thiokol had some concerns but approved the launch. He neglected to say that the approval came only after Thiokol executives, under intense pressure from NASA officials, overruled the engineers. “I was sitting there thinking that’s about as deceiving as anything I ever heard,” McDonald recalled.
What went wrong with the Morton Thiokol O-rings?
By 1985, engineers at Morton Thiokol had another concern about the O-rings, namely that they would lose elasticity in cold weather. Given that NASA’s bevy of planned shuttle missions included winter launches, this was a problem. As told by NASA Space Flight, one of the engineers, Bob Ebeling, wrote a memo in October 1985 and titled it “Help!”
