Challenger Explosion Tragic Hero

Jade Lung

Ms. Davis

College Prep English 1

11 April 2017

Challenger Explosion Tragedy

When the shuttle was launched, everyone was full of joy, but seventy three seconds later everyone became dumbfounded. The shuttle had exploded and seven crew members died.

Monica Cunningham was twenty years old when the terrible disaster of the STS-51-L NASA shuttle orbiter had occurred. Monica was part of the navy and happened to be on board the USS Nimitz the day of this accident. January twenty eighth of 1986 was the day NASA’s shuttle orbiter would be launched into space. The mission was to deploy the second tracking and data relay satellite (Forrest 1).

Monica was off the coast of Okinawa of Japan and a couple days before the incident she

I made straight A’s and everyone came to me for help, but at the moment of the explosion no one knew anything. Everyone was constantly throwing out ideas about what could’ve happened. As of now, we all know what happened and it was time to fix it”(Cunningham). Monica didn’t know much about what had caused the explosion, but no one really did. The crew in Monica’s department had thought the explosion was due to fuel tanks, but after investigations were held, it was concluded that an O ring in one of the solid rocket boosters had burned through causing the challenger to be ripped apart at altitude. Also, there was a leakage of two rubber O rings in a segmented solid rocket booster. The rings lost their ability to stop hot gas because on the day of the launch the O rings were cold due to the temperature (Challenger Disaster). That Tuesday morning at two in the morning, temperatures had dropped and ice had spread across the Fixed Service Structure of the 39B launch pad. Despite that, thick ice was also forming in the sound suppression troughs beneath the booster blast holes in the Mobile Launching Platform (McConnell

She was only twenty years old when the explosion happened. At that time, she was in the navy and never had spare time to know what is going on outside of the navy. She was never able to communicate with her family or friends which was tough for her. Growing up Monica loved science and history, but didn’t have the opportunity to go explore the museums or the outside because she was more focused on school and sports. Monica was never interested with big events or what was going on around her because she wanted to focus more on finishing school. When the time of graduation came, Monica went straight into the navy. While she was in the navy, she was also a part of aviation. She had been in the navy field for about a year before the explosion. When the time of the explosion came, Monica had been devastated. Monica may not of been interested in tragic events, but the Challenger Explosion had a huge impact on her life. Aviation deals with operating and flying aircrafts and that was something Monica really enjoyed doing. Monica had felt a connection with the incident due to her being a part of that career.

One thing that had impacted Monica the most was the good that had came out of the accident. She had mentioned that the families of the pilots organized a non profit organization called “The Challenger center for space science education” and everyone ended up creating fifty two learning centers for the organization. “Doing the