Challenger STS-51L

[Sam Ho]

Article (originally published in 2018) about the above ball:

35 years ago today, America watched a tragedy happen live on TV. @max_brodsky and I got to tell of the improbable journey of a ball pulled from the Challenger wreckage. Still my favorite story I’ve had the privilege to work on.

https://twitter.com/tonyamsimpson/status/1354798399619551235

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/30782213/nasa-astronaut-ellison-onizuka-soccer-ball-survived-challenger-explosion

[ThrottleUp]

Hi i'm new to the site, i was born 6 years after Challenger exploded, when the pandemic happened i looked up all the coverage on youtube (huge thanks to Zellco321 for all their space uploads btw) after years of knowing of Challenger via references on TV, needless to say the Challenger 7 are now all my heroes 

Does anyone have Australian coverage of the disaster? always been interested how we covered it

[MattMason]

Hi i'm new to the site, i was born 6 years after Challenger exploded, when the pandemic happened i looked up all the coverage on youtube (huge thanks to Zellco321 for all their space uploads btw) after years of knowing of Challenger via references on TV, needless to say the Challenger 7 are now all my heroes 

Does anyone have Australian coverage of the disaster? always been interested how we covered it

Welcome to the forums.

What is available of the incident internationally and to today is undoubtedly limited to whether the specific media was actively covering the launch and if, over time, their coverage was digitized or otherwise made available to general public and to the Internet or other public source.

Here in the States, Shuttle coverage became so unremarkable after the first 10 flights that none of the national broadcast networks--The American Broadcasting Company (also known as ABC and not to be confused with the Australian broadcaster), NBC or CBS--had any live coverage. Only the young Cable News Network, CNN, decided to cover the launch live, and only for a few minutes before and shortly after liftoff.

You can find the "CNN Daybreak" morning news coverage on YouTube (seek out the channel by "zellco321", which it seems you already know of) which includes the live coverage. It's a rather interesting slice-of-life morning news day in the US, with President Reagan preparing a State of the Union speech that night, and other bits of US trivia and trials. The launch begins near the 2nd half of the broadcast.

CNN's handling does show the start of poor subject-matter expertise on US spacecraft in the 1980s. During the glory days, with CBS and ABC (through reporters Cronkite and Bergman, among others) learned enough about the functions of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft to also speak of their strengths and limitations competently.

Not so with STS-51-L. CNN had few, if any Subject Matter Experts. Few of the reporters understood the magnitude or the vehicle. Coverage was rather terrible.
Over the years since, CNN upped their game with SMEs, especially reporters John Holliman and Miles O'Brien, who was on hand live during the 2003 Columbia loss and nailed the SME for that coverage.

I did find an news program from the Australian Broadcasting Company on the disaster that day. Hopefully there is more out there, but it is likely radio broadcasts and other Australian television networks of which I know little of. The link is here, which will not play through this post.

[ThrottleUp]

Hi i'm new to the site, i was born 6 years after Challenger exploded, when the pandemic happened i looked up all the coverage on youtube (huge thanks to Zellco321 for all their space uploads btw) after years of knowing of Challenger via references on TV, needless to say the Challenger 7 are now all my heroes 

Does anyone have Australian coverage of the disaster? always been interested how we covered it

Welcome to the forums.

What is available of the incident internationally and to today is undoubtedly limited to whether the specific media was actively covering the launch and if, over time, their coverage was digitized or otherwise made available to general public and to the Internet or other public source.

Here in the States, Shuttle coverage became so unremarkable after the first 10 flights that none of the national broadcast networks--The American Broadcasting Company (also known as ABC and not to be confused with the Australian broadcaster), NBC or CBS--had any live coverage. Only the young Cable News Network, CNN, decided to cover the launch live, and only for a few minutes before and shortly after liftoff.

You can find the "CNN Daybreak" morning news coverage on YouTube (seek out the channel by "zellco321", which it seems you already know of) which includes the live coverage. It's a rather interesting slice-of-life morning news day in the US, with President Reagan preparing a State of the Union speech that night, and other bits of US trivia and trials. The launch begins near the 2nd half of the broadcast.

CNN's handling does show the start of poor subject-matter expertise on US spacecraft in the 1980s. During the glory days, with CBS and ABC (through reporters Cronkite and Bergman, among others) learned enough about the functions of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft to also speak of their strengths and limitations competently.

Not so with STS-51-L. CNN had few, if any Subject Matter Experts. Few of the reporters understood the magnitude or the vehicle. Coverage was rather terrible.
Over the years since, CNN upped their game with SMEs, especially reporters John Holliman and Miles O'Brien, who was on hand live during the 2003 Columbia loss and nailed the SME for that coverage.

I did find an news program from the Australian Broadcasting Company on the disaster that day. Hopefully there is more out there, but it is likely radio broadcasts and other Australian television networks of which I know little of. The link is here, which will not play through this post.

I have a VHS tape from Australia of Challenger coverage, it starts the day after the explosion (US time) via 7 News overnight and goes up to the memorial service, so really all i'm missing is our coverage of the actual launch, have to agree on CNN, Even during Columbia they weren't reporting properly, they said Laurel Clark was a doctor (she was) but failed to mention she was a zoologist which had me confused when a documentary said she was!

[edkyle99]

NASA confirming that divers working on a History Channel documentary have found a large piece of Challenger buried in sand under the Atlantic.   

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-views-images-confirms-discovery-of-shuttle-challenger-artifact

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/challenger-space-shuttle-artifact-found-florida-ocean-divers-history-channel/
(includes image of discovered artifact)

https://twitter.com/HISTORY/status/1590722716931620864

  - Ed Kyle

[AS_501]

NBC Nightly News covered this tonight, showing a photo of the 51L crew, followed by the crew of STS-107, except it was the STS-61C crew with then Representative Bill Nelson.  I hope none of the STS-107 families saw this.

[Hog]

NBC Nightly News covered this tonight, showing a photo of the 51L crew, followed by the crew of STS-107, except it was the STS-61C crew with then Representative Bill Nelson.  I hope none of the STS-107 families saw this.

That's brutal, but not surprising.  I've seen TV news report that NASA knew about STS-107 damage and purposefully didn't tell the crew.

I can't believe it's been 37 years since Challenger.  Do you personally remember the Apollo-1(AS-204) fire As_501?

[AS_501]

NBC Nightly News covered this tonight, showing a photo of the 51L crew, followed by the crew of STS-107, except it was the STS-61C crew with then Representative Bill Nelson.  I hope none of the STS-107 families saw this.

That's brutal, but not surprising.  I've seen TV news report that NASA knew about STS-107 damage and purposefully didn't tell the crew.

I can't believe it's been 37 years since Challenger.  Do you personally remember the Apollo-1(AS-204) fire As_501?

Very clearly.  In fact, I remember Jules Bergman of ABC news saying that one of AS-204 crew may have survived!  I'm still puzzled where he ever got that idea.

[catdlr]

NBC Nightly News covered this tonight, showing a photo of the 51L crew, followed by the crew of STS-107, except it was the STS-61C crew with then Representative Bill Nelson.  I hope none of the STS-107 families saw this.

That's brutal, but not surprising.  I've seen TV news report that NASA knew about STS-107 damage and purposefully didn't tell the crew.

I can't believe it's been 37 years since Challenger.  Do you personally remember the Apollo-1(AS-204) fire As_501?

Very clearly.  In fact, I remember Jules Bergman of ABC news saying that one of AS-204 crew may have survived!  I'm still puzzled where he ever got that idea.

Same here, I was on my knees in front of my parents' TV set watching this as well.

[catdlr]

video to replace the post that went dead....

CHALLENGER SPACECRAFT UNCOVERED ON OCEAN FLOOR | The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters (Season 1)

Nov 30, 2022
Mike and his dive team search for clues regarding a bizarre case of 27 missing people but come across something bigger. See more in this clip from Season 1, "A Big Find."

Watch new episodes of The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters, Tuesdays at 10/9c, and stay up to date on all of your favorite The HISTORY Channel shows at history.com/schedule.

[eeergo]

video to replace the post that went dead....

CHALLENGER SPACECRAFT UNCOVERED ON OCEAN FLOOR | The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters (Season 1)

Wow, that Bermuda triangle sure is off-putting in many ways.

Moreover, were the Challenger remains found in that area at all? The Northern edge in that map looks way more South than the general area off the Cape.

[catdlr]

....bump for Flight Director Loop video

STS-51L Flight Director Loop Extended Coverage

Nov 11, 2023
An extended version of the Flight Director Loop from the STS-51L mission starting at T-31 seconds through to the flight controllers being released from their stations about an hour after the accident.

[ThrottleUp]

i got a tape of Australian coverage of the disaster and days after and have uploaded some of it to Youtube







We didn't have rolling coverage but our daytime and evening news programmes dedicated their entire bulletins to the disaster