Editor’s observe: This story incorporates dialogue of astronaut fatalities and harmful moments in human spaceflight.
It was 40 years in the past immediately (Jan. 28) that the area shuttle Challenger blasted off on its tenth mission to area. Sadly, the car by no means made it there.
Ron Doel, who is today a professor of history at Florida State University, was at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California that day. He was watching the Challenger launch on TV while awaiting JPL’s daily news briefing about Voyager 2, a NASA spacecraft that had just flown by Uranus.
“The shock was visceral, immediate,” Doel told Space.com by email. Perhaps it was all the more so for him, as an unusual set of circumstances lined up to bring Doel there: he was then a Ph.D. candidate in the history of science program at Princeton University, on a quick visit to learn more about Voyager. Doel had press credentials at JPL through some connections secured through an earlier book contract, allowing him to watch the reporters there react in real time.
“Monitors in the press room that had been showing in real time images transmitted from Voyager now showed, over and over, the launch and explosion,” he said. “Some in the press raced out of JPL with new assignments. The Voyager briefing was canceled. NASA officials, as I recall, gave us a briefing on the accident later in the day.”
The aftermath
An independent board, often called the Rogers Commission after its chair William P. Rogers, investigated the Challenger accident and found that it was caused by a combination of factors. The 260-page report can’t be summarized in a couple of phrases, however one of many extra well-known strains is that this: “The choice to launch the Challenger was flawed.” Not solely have been there technical issues (most famously, an “O-ring” seal failing as a result of unusually chilly situations), however decision-makers made a number of assumptions that turned out to be unwarranted.
Sadly, Challenger did not stay the lone area shuttle tragedy. Seventeen years later got here the breakup of the area shuttle Columbia throughout reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing one other seven astronauts. That sparked a brand new question known as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. That Board produced a two-volume report, which additionally discovered {that a} set of technical and human failures led to the astronauts’ deaths.
“Columbia I bear in mind in a variety of element, as a result of on the time I used to be a volunteer on the Boston Museum of Science,” recalled Pauline Barmby, immediately a division chair of physics and astronomy at Canada’s Western College, whose school embody astronaut trainers and area instrument/experiment designers. Barmby additionally served as a workforce member on one of many devices for NASA’s Spitzer Area Telescope.
“They [the museum] have been planning on doing a dwell protection of the touchdown,” Barmby informed Area.com. However tv stations as an alternative solely had dwell pictures from Texas displaying the shuttle’s particles trails because it broke up. “I recall vividly the one who was to be the presenter simply broke down.”
Different fatalities in spaceflight embody the Apollo 1 launch-pad fireplace on Jan. 27, 1967, which killed three astronauts; the crash-landing of the Soviet Union’s Soyuz 1 spacecraft that killed its single cosmonaut on April 24, 1967; and Soyuz 11, whose three cosmonauts died throughout reentry (as a result of depressurization) on June 29, 1971. (This checklist shouldn’t be complete; it does not embody all coaching fatalities, for instance.)
There have additionally been quite a few shut calls over time, together with in latest reminiscence. For instance: European Area Company astronaut Luca Parmitano skilled a water leak within the helmet of his NASA spacesuit whereas spacewalking exterior the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) in 2013. And suspected particles strikes broken crewed spacecraft docked to each the ISS and China’s Tiangong area station, forcing car swaps for astronauts initially scheduled to return residence on Russia’s Soyuz-MS 22 spacecraft and China’s Shenzhou 20 capsule. Every little thing labored out in each instances; the spaceflyers landed safely in September 2023 and November 2025, respectively.
Because the above examples present, human spaceflight is dangerous. Every incident is investigated and reported on by the accountable entity, with the thought to stop related points from arising sooner or later. However typically, the surprising occurs. Skilled astronauts at any company would probably inform you that they’re ready, each in coaching and in mindset, to be prepared for the worst. However with extra missions launching to area than ever lately, together with with personal residents, what classes can we take into consideration to maintain flying?
Classes discovered
Within the not-too-distant previous, a rocket may launch to orbit each few weeks or so. However lately, we see launches each few days — and infrequently much more steadily than that. There’s a security problem right here, and it will increase with launch cadence: Points are sometimes recognized with the help of hindsight, and the general public does not essentially have perception into how selections have been made till they’re probed by after-the-fact investigatory boards.
However NASA embraces a fancy set of things on each vital spaceflight determination, particularly these concerning crewed missions. For instance, the company seems to be at previous incidents to see “lessons learned,” which might help stop points sooner or later. NASA additionally examines spaceflight {hardware}, listens to consultants and brings in exterior voices on some selections, simply to call a couple of concerns.
Company officers emphasised in a Jan. 16 press convention that everybody could be very cautious in green-lighting the launch of crewed missions, such because the forthcoming Artemis 2, which is able to ship 4 astronauts across the moon as quickly as Feb. 6.
We received some insights into that safety-first mindset throughout that briefing. A reporter requested why NASA was going forward with simultaneous launch preparations for Artemis 2 and SpaceX’s Crew-12 astronaut mission to the ISS, which is presently focused for Feb. 15.
“This isn’t a rush,” replied Jeff Radigan, NASA’s lead flight director for Artemis 2.
“It isn’t prudent for us to place each these [missions] up on the similar time, however we even have to make sure that each of them are able to go,” he added. “We could run into a problem, and the very last thing we wish to do is decide too early after which lose a possibility.”
Florida State College’s Doel famous that making the best name on a regular basis is each “exhausting, and harmful” but in addition mentioned that “folks can repair issues in tech methods over time.” That mentioned, he added, “‘classes discovered’ is troublesome, is not it, because the methods themselves will not be static however frequently evolving. We’re not utilizing Apollo expertise anymore; classes will not essentially apply.”
Quicker, higher, cheaper?
Satellites are smaller and cheaper to launch than they was, and extra industries than ever rely upon area for army monitoring, Earth statement and telecommunications, amongst different functions. An enormous roster of personal firms — famously led by SpaceX — have cashed in on the demand.
While the experts Space.com talked to were careful not to lay blame or praise on any particular space entity for its safety practices, they said in general that there’s pressure on the system that should be acknowledged by anyone in space engineering.
“The joke about space missions is, they don’t get launched until there’s a pile of paperwork that’s as high as the rocket,” Western University’s Barmby said. “There’s an enormous amount of testing, and you make one minor change and you test to make sure that everything works the same way it did before, and then you make one more change. There’s an enormous amount of testing and documentation that happens before launch. But there is also a recognition that there’s some things that you cannot test, and you will only see what happens once you’re actually in space.”
Doel, as professors often do, also recommended further reading about systems under pressure — for example, anything by Thomas Hughes on technological systems; Barbara Keys’ work on the position feelings play in selections, akin to “Personal and Political Emotions in the Mind of the Diplomat” (2019); Edward Tenner’s “Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences” (1997); and Diane Vaughn’s “The Challenger Launch Decision” (1996).
With extra spaceflight exercise occurring typically, personal firms are taking up increasingly duty for missions as nicely. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and Virgin Galactic have all launched humans to space recently. A few of their missions have had issues, however.
For example, Blue Origin has suffered a partial failure and a full failure of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle, both times during uncrewed flights. Virgin Galactic had a pilot fatality during a test flight in October 2014. And even SpaceX, which is famously prolific and technically adept in launching people and satellites safely, has had a few hiccups — a tiny handful of Falcon 9 rocket launches or landings have failed over the past decade, requiring investigations that briefly grounded the fleet.
None of the Falcon 9 issues unduly affected crewed missions or kept Elon Musk‘s company on the ground for long. But some critics say there’s a vulnerability in having as much riding on one company’s rockets as the U.S. government does with SpaceX.
In 2024, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched on its first-ever crewed flight, a test mission that sent two NASA astronauts to the ISS. But a number of issues cropped up en route, ultimately leading NASA to bring Starliner home uncrewed. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, came back to Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule about nine months after their originally expected return date. Starliner also experienced issues on its two previous flights, which were uncrewed test missions to the ISS.
The experts interviewed for this article were careful to stress that they are outsiders to the decision-making processes for human spaceflight. But Barmby said she likes a bit of wisdom provided up by a high-profile insider — retired Canadian Area Company astronaut Chris Hadfield, whose phrases she paraphrased. “Your first job is to not make issues worse,” she mentioned. “In lots of of those … the state of affairs was not, ‘We have got to resolve within the subsequent 10 minutes.’ It is, ‘We have got to resolve within the subsequent couple of days.’ So I believe the lesson there may be, sure, it is severe, however we do not instantly panic.”
Doel mentioned that historical past is considerably useful in stopping future issues, however no analogy is ideal. “Historical past usually does not repeat, precisely, however it usually rhymes,” he mentioned.
For instance, early within the area shuttle’s 30-year historical past, launches usually occurred each few weeks. This was largely as a result of, as the nonprofit Planetary Society points out, “the U.S. adhered to a shuttle-only launch coverage for all area missions.” Whereas the shuttle was an unbelievable car, early hopes that it will function a rapid-reuse “area truck” have been rapidly dashed, particularly by the Challenger and Columbia accidents.
“The shuttle’s legacy is complicated: It by no means lived as much as its promise of enabling quick, inexpensive area journey,” the Planetary Society wrote. “Nonetheless, the shuttles made spectacular scientific, technological and cultural achievements. Probably the most well-traveled shuttle, Discovery, flew 39 instances — a file that can stand for years to return.”
