Wreck diver describes finding part of the Space Shuttle Challenger
The explosion of NASA's Challenger Space Shuttle only 73 seconds after it launched in 1986 is one of the U.S. space agency's worst-ever disasters, resulting in the loss of life of all seven crew members onboard, including a schoolteacher taking part in a new NASA initiative.
Though Challenger wasn't the last Space Shuttle mission, the disaster was one of the main reasons the Space Shuttle program was retired in 2011, leading to nine years of reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets up to the point that SpaceX first flew humans to the International Space Station in 2020.