Seven astronauts ever set foot on a cold wind blows over Cape Canaveral.

Helicopters covered beaches in shore, looking for anything that might have been washed in.

Fireman rode motorcycles.

Public joined in as well.

We know there's debris washing up on the beach.

We need every piece of that because we don't know where the clue might be.

And soon they began to find clues.

Scattered pieces of wreckage presumed at this stage to be from the shuttle challenger.

Who gave you that?

One of the people looking, Yeah, one of people just walking down the street, just in case it might be it.

When Challenger exploded, the sort of myths about NASA exploded, two of it being, You know, this organization of people who had the right stuff, who did everything right, who performed, really what seemed to many people to be miracles.

A time of the Challenger launch.

I was the director of the space shuttle Solid Rocket Motor project for my company, Morton Tackle.

We, uh, produced those two large solid rocket boosters that air strapped to the external tank that provide most of the thrust for the system to put it into orbit.

More charcoal who built the solid rocket boosters were very, very worried about very cold temperature.

The team will be looking for ice or frost that may have formed on the tank or engines during the fuelling process.

They were planning to launch the shuttle at minus two degrees centigrade when the coldest launch to date had been a 12 degrees centigrade.

Saw these huge icicles hanging off the picture of structure, often the orbiter off tank off the solid rocket boosters.

Nothing don't want, Just think they no way the pressure was.

NASA had to prove it could launch every month of the year.

Cold weather, warm weather that they could have a schedule that was reliable and so not being able to launch on January 28th 1986 was kind of a big deal.

Presidential commission investigating the accident has firmly fixed its gaze on the shuttle solid rocket boosters.

Well, these solid rocket boosters were somewhat unique in that they were so large that they had to make it in pieces and actually assembled it.

Kate, just by stacking a lot much like beer cans, it's not a continuous tube.

It's a serious of segments joined together by highly critical seals.

No ring is a rubbery material that prevents either gases or liquids from leaking, much like you put a washer in your faucet.

Differences.

This was 12 feet diamond.

One of the seals goes at any point along here.

The gases will just come out the bottom, but they will seep out the sides as well.

That would most likely result in a catastrophic failure.

And that was the exact issue with Challenger masses.

Own figures reveal their have bean 22 cases of flames eroding the first of the O rings.

In two cases, the second reel ring has been compromised.

Previous Cold Launch had produced really strong arose, and they found soot even on the S R B attachments, which indicate the gas had really got par theory.

Wade seen that lower temperature, and we didn't want to go any further below that because we knew that someplace out there, we didn't know the exact temperature that these rings may not see of it all.

And therefore we probably would never see such a condition again in history, the shuttle program.

So, in a way, I think people got a bit more desensitized they should about never seeing that problem again.

It's these seals that are now the focus of investigation.

What you're looking at is the single point failure mode that your whole safety is resting on showing damage in flight to me.

At that point, you are looking at a potential disaster.

Molten fire call.

The company that builds the boosters is reported to have strongly opposed to launch.

The engineers at Morton Cycle knew that there were there was a serious risk, but they were told to, you know, take their engineering hats off and put their management hats on on dhe.

Think Maura about the commercial consequences to Morton Thiokol.

And I know who that responsible Thiokol official was.

That was me.

I made the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime.

I told NASA would not sign that recommendation lunch.

I think we're taking too much risk.

Engineers recommended NASA wait until it was 54 degrees Fahrenheit before launching.

But NASA refused to change its schedule and pressured Morton Thiokol to move forward with the launch.

So Morton Fi calls management, chose to ignore the engineers and reversed the recommendation.

Presidential Commission reported to be angry when he learns of this round during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center, publicly announced that NASA's decision to launch the challenger was flawed, and it insisted that everyone concerned with making that decision be removed from masses.

Internal investigating Team NASA Stands Accused of Floored Safety, Culture of major management failures.

This is not just about technical failures, but also about a human failure at the heart of the space agency.

If you bring together these two factors the concern for the O rings performance of low temperatures on the lack of testing it really waas a disaster waiting to happen.

Hot gas escaped from Star Borders.

I'll be and it caused, restructured, basically to fail.

Very, very hot gas burned away.

One of the attachment points it didn't blow up.

People think it blows up because of the weight comes apart, but it doesn't.

It's tall, apart by the very high aerodynamic loads.

At that point, I saw the last portion of the explosion, essentially in the two solid rocket boosters taking off on their own.

What the subsequent investigation found was that there was some evidence of bits of debris and and so on, temporarily providing a seal, which then failed 73 seconds into the flight on dhe.

That's when you get the major leak and the subsequent explosion.

They were launched in a pressurized crew cabin, much like again an airplane they had on board what they called peeps.

Personal egress, air packs and those air have a 2 to 3 minutes of actual air you can breathe.

What they found is about five or six weeks later that the commander and pilot both had their peeps on, and most of it was expelled.

They also mentioned that several others were in the same condition.

They didn't say where they all were, but the application was.

They really all died at water impact several minutes later when they hit the ocean about 200 miles an hour.