Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

by Adam Higginbotham

Out on the pad, temperatures had reached their lowest shortly after dawn, falling to 24 degrees Fahrenheit—eight degrees below freezing. The seething cold had crept into everything: the doors on the gantry elevator had become sluggish; several of the remote cameras had stopped working; an oxygen sensor aboard the shuttle had failed; one radio channel had been knocked out; and, down on the Mobile Launcher Platform, beneath the nozzles of the solid rockets—and in defiance of the hundreds of gallons of antifreeze—water in the sound suppression troughs had frozen solid. Sheer cascades of ice now descended from near the very top of the launch tower, bearding the walkways just sixty feet from Challenger’s left wingtip and encapsulating communications equipment. “Looks like, uh, something out of Dr. Zhivago,” said the Rockwell liaison, surveying the closed-circuit TV images from the Launch Control Center; he had never seen anything like it. “There’s sheets of icicles hanging everywhere,” he said.