Weather That Changed the World

Challenger Disaster (1x8)

: 07, 2013

January 28th, 1986. The space shuttle Challenger explodes just 73 seconds after launch. Burning debris rains 7 miles down from the skies. The entire crew perishes – amongst them teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was to become the first true civilian in space. And when disaster teams recover the wreckage, analysis shows that out of more than 2 million components in the shuttle, one small part failed -a rubberized ring just a quarter inch thick, on one of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters. It's a flaw in the shuttle's complex engineering... But the reason it fails......is the weather. Former Director of Shuttle Programming Bob Sieck recounts his experiences on that fatal day and Meteorologist Dr Jon Nese explains how cold weather caused the rubberized ring to fail.