Last week, the world remembered the loss of the space shuttle Challenger. Challenger exploded shortly after launch on January 28, 1986, and like many, I remember seeing the explosion on television – very vaguely, as I was only 5 – presumably on the evening news. The Challenger disaster brings a double layer of remembrance. Around the 15th anniversary of the accident, I was in my final year of university, and after 3 years of studying physics and astronomy I was exploring some new interests: engineering and science writing. I took a course in science writing in UCL’s Department of Science and Technology Studies, taught by Jon Turney. Incidentally, this was against the advice of the astronomy course tutors, who warned me that these courses would drag down my grades and jeopardise a potential PhD spot – but I think that worked out ok in the end, and it was one of the most fun things I did at UCL.  I wrote this sort piece on the Challenger accident for one of the course assignments, and I thought I’d post it up here – remembering myself a decade ago, remembering Challenger a quarter of a century ago.

“Uh-oh”. Those were the last recorded words of Michael J. Smith, pilot of the space shuttle Challenger, before the craft’s  explosion killed him and the other six astronauts on board. That was fifteen years ago, on January 28, 1986. It was the twenty-fifth shuttle flight ever, and the first of the fifteen that were scheduled that year. 1986 was to be the busiest year in the history of human space flight. After the success of the Apollo, Mercury and Gemini missions and twenty-four clean shuttle flights, NASA’s self-esteem was at an all-time high. And management was determined to maintain the impressive track record they had established, at any cost. The cost, as it turned out, was seven lives.

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