40 years ago today NASA’s space shuttle exploded on national television, killing all on board
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross
I was recently reminded of a sunny Tuesday morning in January when I was sitting at my desk in the old newsroom at the Daily Reporter waiting, like millions of others around the world, for the liftoff of the space shuttle Challenger. It was forty years ago Wednesday – January 28,1986.
I was watching, not so much for the excitement of seeing the spaceship headed into the dark void of space, but because for the very first time there was a civilian who was part of the crew. History and English teacher from Concord, NH Christa McAuliffe, 38, was sitting in one of the seven seats. She was two years older than I was. She was the first teacher in space as part of NASA’s Teacher in Space Program. She had beaten over 11,000 other applicants for the position. She was going to offer three lessons from space to be seen in classrooms across the nation. It was a history making flight that became more historical than one would ever expect.
Like the rest of the world, when we saw the Challenger explode, 73 seconds into its flight, our hearts plummeted with it.
After the Challenger debacle NASA halted the shuttle program for 32 months to study the problems that led to the explosion.
My interest in space travel waned. The next space event I watched Blue Origin’s All Woman Space Flight on April 14th, 2025 when six women boarded Jeff Bezos’s the New Shepard spacecraft launched from west Texas. On board were Journalist Gayle King, 70; activist/Independent Filmmaker Kerianne Flynn, 57; Musical Artist Katy Perry, 40; former NASA scientist Arisa Bowe, 39; Bioastronautics’ Research Scientist Amanda Ngyen, 33; and Filmmaker Lauren Sanchez, 32.
I’m a child of the space age. I heard President John F. Kennedy declare that we would go to the moon by the end of the decade. I wondered about the Russan stray dog Laika who was the first earthling to fly into space. I looked up into the starry sky to spot John Glenn orbiting the Earth. On July 20,1969 I sat on the back porch watching the tv with my parents, who saw the first biplanes as children, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on and walked on the moon, fulfilling Kennedy’s promise.
A year or so ago while reading about the Wright brothers I learned that a piece of the cloth that covered the wings of the Wright Flyer (the first manned flight) was included in the memorabilia that was left on the moon by Armstrong and Aldrin. I think that’s neat.
I love the music of the space race, “Telstar,” “Rocket Man,” “Across the Universe” “Major Tom,” “Spirit In the Sky,” the Star Wars theme, and “Ride Sally Ride,”
I loved it when Sally Ride became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space in 1983 following in the footsteps of cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. Ride was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space. She was 32.
I reveled when Elmira native and Corning Community College graduate (I went there too) Eileen Collins was selected as the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle.
Space, is the last frontier and the best chance for the world’s future.
Kathryn Ross is a lifetime Wellsville resident, journalist, writer, and community activist. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
