STS 51-L Mission plaque-Challenger Disaster

Located in the Launch Control Center (LCC) with all the other mission plaques. It includes launch date but no landing date since Orbiter and crew were lost on liftoff.

STS-51-L was the twenty-fifth flight of the American Space Shuttle program, using Space Shuttle Challenger, which lifted off from the Launch Complex 39-B on January 28, 1986, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This flight marked the first time a non-government civilian, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, had flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The mission ended in disaster with the destruction of Challenger 73 seconds after lift-off and the death of all seven crewmembers. The Rogers Commission determined the cause was due to the failure of an O-ring seal on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters