ing near congested airports must operate tran-
sponders. The FAA also deployed enhanced radar,
reorganized air traffic control centers in Southern
California, and altered Los Angeles-area flight routes
to separate small aircraft from large jets.
Further Reading
Magnuson, Ed. “Collision in the ‘Birdcage.’”Time
128, no. 11 (September 15, 1986): 26-27. Provides
quotations from witnesses, including a pilot who
saw the jet fall, and insights regarding both
flights.
Mordoff, Keith F. “Safety Board Completes Field In-
vestigation of California Crash.”Aviation Week and
Space Technology125, no. 11 (September 15,
1986): 36. Describes NTSB procedures for exam-
ining Cerritos evidence.
O’Connor, Colleen. “Collision in Crowded Sky.”
Newsweek108, no. 11 (September 15, 1986): 34-35.
Notes Kramer’s preflight preparations, including
purchasing a TCA map.
Oster, Clinton V., John S. Strong, and C. Kurt Zorn.
Why Airplanes Crash: Aviation Safety in a Changing
World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Discusses the Cerritos crash in the context of
other midair collisions.
Work, Clemens P. “Too Many Planes, Too Little Sky.”
U.S. News & World Report101, no. 11 (September
15, 1986): 32-33. Provides statistics relevant to avi-
ation safety and LAX airspace.
Elizabeth D. Schafer
See also Air traffic controllers’ strike; Mexico and
the United States; Science and technology; Sioux
City plane crash.
Challengerdisaster
The Event Space shuttle explosion
Date January 28, 1986
Place Kennedy Space Center, Florida
NASA’s space shuttleChallenger disintegrated about
seventy-three seconds after launch, killing the seven astro-
nauts aboard, including civilian S. Christa McAuliffe.
The public’s shock over the disaster grew when the commis-
sion investigating its cause determined that the process
NASA used to assess launch safety was seriously flawed.
NASA suspended its piloted spaceflight program for thirty-
two months, while the space shuttle fleet was modified.
The January, 1986, launch ofChallengerattracted
considerably more public attention than most of the
twenty-four previous U.S. space shuttle flights, be-
cause it was to be the first flight in the National Aero-
nautics and Space Administration (NASA) Teacher
in Space Project. S. Christa McAuliffe, a thirty-seven-
year-old secondary school teacher from Concord,
New Hampshire, had been selected in July, 1985,
from a group of more than eleven thousand appli-
cants, to become the first teacher to fly in space.
McAuliffe, who was interviewed on television by
Larry King, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Regis
Philbin, and others, immediately became a celebrity,
and NASA received considerable favorable publicity
in the months leading up to the flight.
The mission was led by Commander Dick Scobee
and piloted by Michael J. Smith. The crew of seven
astronauts also included three mission specialists—
Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Ronald E.
McNair, whose primary responsibility was the op-
eration of orbiter systems—and two payload special-
ists—Gregory B. Jarvis and McAuliffe, whose pri-
mary responsibility was to conduct experiments.
The mission was scheduled to deploy a Tracking
and Data-Relay Satellite, to launch and recover the
SPARTAN-Halley comet research observatory, and
to broadcast two live science lessons to schoolchil-
dren around the country.A Delay-Plagued Launch Challenger’s launch was
originally scheduled for January 22, 1986, but it was
postponed to January 23 and then to January 24,
becauseChallengerneeded parts from the shuttleCo-
lumbia, butColumbia’s return to Earth had been de-
layed several times. The January 24 launch was can-
celed because of bad weather at the emergency
landing site in Senegal. The emergency site was
changed to Casablanca, Morocco, but because there
were no landing lights at that site, the time of the
launch had to be moved earlier in the day, so it
would still be light in Casablanca when the shuttle
lifted off in Florida. Weather conditions in the
United States caused the launch to be pushed back
to January 27. The January 27 launch was postponed
because of a problem with the exterior handle on
the orbiter’s hatch.
On the morning of January 28, the launch was de-
layed for two hours when a liquid hydrogen monitor
failed. Unusually cold weather, with the ambient air
temperature near freezing, had prompted concern194 Challengerdisaster The Eighties in America