STS-51-L Recovered Debris (Orbiter)

(April 8, 1986) On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger and her seven-member crew were lost when a ruptured O-ring in the right Solid Rocket Booster caused an explosion soon after launch. After the accident, search and recovery teams worked for months to bring debris from Shuttle to impoundment areas at the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where reconstruction teams separated the pieces of the orbiter from those of the External Tank and the Solid Rocket Boosters. Taped squares on the floor turned the impoundment areas into a grid in which the reconstruction teams could piece together the Shuttle debris like a puzzle with many missing segments. Shown here is the reassembled Orbiter.