() — A group of explorers ventured into the Atlantic Ocean in search of World War II artifacts lost at sea, but they came across something else: a twenty-foot-long segment of the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger, which was shortly destroyed. after its release in 1986.
The History Channel and NASA revealed Thursday that the Challenger segment was discovered off the east coast of Florida during filming for a new series called “The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters.” The series will premiere this month on the History Channel.
Challenger broke up upon launch on January 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members on board, including a professor who was to become the first civilian in space. Viewers, especially school students across the United States, watched the live broadcast of the explosion that morning in horror.
“NASA is currently considering what additional actions it can take regarding the artifact that will appropriately honor the legacy of the fallen Challenger astronauts and their loved ones,” the space agency said in a press release.
Mike Barnette, an underwater explorer who led the team that found the shuttle artifact, remembers watching the tragedy on television in his high school class. Barnette said it was a “sobering” experience to realize his team had found a piece of the spacecraft, the first wreckage to be discovered since the shuttle’s remnants washed ashore in 1996.
“I can almost smell the smells from that day,” Barnette told in a telephone interview Thursday, referring to the day the Challenger exploded. “I have it so burned into my brain.”
Barnette and his team of investigators set out in March to search for suspected shipwrecks in the Bermuda Triangle, a stretch of the northern Atlantic Ocean where dozens of shipwrecks and plane crashes are said to have occurred. The team also examined an area outside the triangle, just off Florida’s Space Coast, where NASA has launched rockets since its inception.
The team was looking for a rescue plane from World War II that mysteriously disappeared in December 1945, but a more modern object partially covered by seafloor sand sparked the interest and investigation of the dive team, according to the History Channel.
During the first dive, Barnette said a storm made the water so cloudy it was like swimming in Guinness beer. “We had terrible visibility,” she said.
Divers made a second excursion in May and finally captured clear images of the wreckage. They brought proof of their discovery to retired NASA astronaut, Bruce Melnicka longtime friend of Barnette’s, who immediately suggested that it might be debris from the Challenger disaster.
Particular square mosaics from Challenger gave the clue to explorers, suggesting that they had discovered a large chunk of the orbiter’s underside. The underside was covered with thousands of silicone mosaics that protected the shuttle from heat as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere from space.
The team delivered their findings to NASA in August, and the space agency recently confirmed the origin of the debris after reviewing images from the dive, according to a press release.
Challenger’s latest mission was to carry seven people into space: NASA astronauts Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Gregory Jarvis, as well as Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire. that she was to become the first civilian passenger on the space shuttle as part of a new NASA program.
However, 73 seconds after its liftoff from the Florida launch center, Challenger exploded, killing all on board. A NASA investigation later revealed that a rubber washer on one of Challenger’s solid rocket boosters had failed because it was exposed to unusually low temperatures while the space shuttle was on the launch pad. This caused a leak of highly explosive gases, which ultimately led to the catastrophic explosion.
“Though nearly 37 years have passed since seven daring and brave explorers lost their lives aboard Challenger, this tragedy will forever be etched in the collective memory of our country. For millions of people around the world, including myself , January 28, 1986 still seems like yesterday,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
“This discovery gives us a chance to pause once again, to uphold the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy has changed us. At NASA, the core value of safety is, and must be, forever remain our top priority, especially as our missions explore more of the cosmos than ever before.”
The six-part series “The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters” premieres at 10 pm ET on November 22 on the History Channel.
