As every January 28, NASA recalls its fall from the tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded after takeoff 33 years ago in 1986, leaving seven crew members dead.
Six NASA astronauts and Christa McAuliffe – the first teacher to travel to space – died in the Challenger disaster when the space shuttle exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. The official cause was a flaw in one of the impulse engines.
Condemned to disappear from this crash, the space shuttle program formally ended in 2011, after three decades bringing astronauts to and from the Earth's low orbit. His retirement left the United States without a vehicle for manned space travel, a job that focused on Russian Soyuz, waiting for the new ships "Made in USA" Space X and Boeing, which will arrive during this year of 2019.
The other major crash on the space shuttle was Feb. 1, 2003. Seven people were killed aboard the Columbia space shuttle when it broke apart when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere because it had lost thermal shingles from its bottom at takeoff, and the ship did not withstand the heat of friction with the atmosphere.
The US space agency also commemorates the death of three astronauts on Apollo 1, due to a fire on the launch pad. In addition, in 1967, NASA lost a wounded pilot with an X15 hypersonic aircraft fueled by rockets.
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