Feb 5 1997
From The Space Library
Flight International published a story claiming that, more than 10 years after the explosion of Challenger, aerospace engineer Ali Abu Taha had discovered new evidence in Time-Life photographs demonstrating that a breach and a fire in Challenger's right Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) had caused the explosion. One photograph, taken about 20 seconds after liftoff, revealed a 3-meter-long (10-foot-long) flame issuing from an SRB joint, and another clearly showed a white object separating from the same SRB seconds later. The discovery seemed to support Taha's controversial theory that the booster had caught fire at liftoff and burned continuously until the explosion occurred. In contrast to Taha's findings, which focused on dynamic liftoff loads, the congressionally mandated Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (Rogers Commission) had reported that faulty O-rings caused the tragedy. Automatic cameras set up around the Cape Canaveral, Florida, launch site had taken the photographs that Taha used as evidence for his theory, images never released to the public. Taha's photographic analysis also revealed that the explosion had propelled Challenger's crew compartment thousands of meters away from the explosion, partially explaining why investigators had taken 40 days to locate the shell. Taha suggested that a shock wave had killed the crew instantly, although NASA had never found evidence of a shock wave. News of the photographs and of Taha's research kept alive the debate surrounding the decade-old accident.
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