The O Ring Challenger

But nasa was under pressure to keep to its ambitious flight schedule and the risk was deemed acceptable.

The o ring challenger. It found that the challenger accident was caused by a failure in the o rings sealing a joint on the right solid rocket booster which allowed pressurized hot gases and eventually flame to blow by the o ring and make contact with the adjacent external tank causing structural failure. The final crew of the space shuttle challenger via wikipedia. The o ring was known to be sensitive to cold and could only work. The failure of the o rings was attributed to a faulty design whose performance could be too easily compromised by factors including the low ambient temperature on the day of launch.

Morton thiokol discovered that both o rings booster sealers had malfunctioned which led to the fuel tank blowing up. An investigation found some workers had warned nasa about the danger of launching challenger because the o rings grew brittle in cold weather. In challenger s case the o ring got so cold it hadn t expanded properly and allowed the leak. The challenger itself didn t technically explode but rather disintegrated from the result of the o ring malfunction.

This raised a more pressing question. Nasa s space shuttle challenger accident was a devastating tragedy that killed seven astronauts and shocked the world on jan. Nasa s own pre launch estimates were that there was a 1 in 100 000 chance of shuttle failure for any given launch and poor statistical reasoning was a key.