Last known image of astronauts taken moments before fatal incident that saw all crew lose their lives
The tragic final photo of the Challenger crew shows the seven astronauts grinning as they headed to the rocket which would turn into a fireball less than two minutes into their spaceflight, killing them all.
The awful incident happened 30 years ago in 1986 at the Kennedy Space Center.
The NASA expedition was supposed to launch two satellites, one of which was set to monitor Halley's Comet during its closest approach to the Sun.
However, the Challenger was set ablaze in a huge fireball during a televised take off just 73 seconds into its flight.
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As NASA engineers and millions around the world watched as it disintegrated 46,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, it was clear that seven passengers on board were killed and there was no chance of survival.
Those on board were astronauts Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe who all died during the explosion.
Caused by the failure of two rubber O-rings to seal at the joint of two Solid Rocket Boosters, which then went on to throw out hot exhaust gas, which turned into flames.
This then ignited the main liquid tank on the craft, which was a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
It must have been a terrifying end.
As many people recall watching the moment they all left on the rocket, only to go down moments later, they might not realise that there was one image that showed just how excited they really were to begin their journey to space.
On that fateful day, a picture was snapped of the seven emerging from the building and waving at crowds.
With big grins on their faces and that fresh spark of excitement to do something groundbreaking, it’s all the more heartbreaking that they would never make it to their destination.
This would be their last picture ever taken together before the incident.
After the astronauts died on board and family members in the crowds began to mourn their losses, NASA received some hefty criticism.
This was particularly due to people believing it was all down to man-made faults.
In fact, one employee at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol raised the alarm long before the Challenger crew boarded the doomed spacecraft.
Roger Boisjoly, a mechanic who worked on the craft was so concerned by what he was seeing being created that six months before the Challenger launch, he informed company's vice president of engineering of the issues he saw so that they were ‘fully aware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosion problem’.
Explaining that the O-ring issue, if not fixed, ‘would be a catastrophe of the highest order - the loss of human life'.
Then, the day before the scheduled launch, NASA officials and Morton Thiokol management talked about the O-ring issue.
For the second time, Boisjoly spoke out about what could happen if the O-ring wasn’t resolved.
But everyone overrode his concerns and planned for it to go ahead anyway.
The next day, everyone on board would be dead and a lawsuit would find that Morton Thiokol was largely responsible for the faulty O-ring.
Britt Jones