Challenger Digest 2

When Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight on the morning of 28 January 1986, it represented one of the most shocking events in the history of American spaceflight. A Presidential Commission was immediately convened to explore what had gone wrong, but with the vast complexity of the space shuttle and so many vested interests involved in the investigation, discovering the truth presented an almost impossible challenge.

In 1872 HMS Challenger left Portsmouth on a voyage that was to take her round the world, eight times across the Equator, into the Antarctic ice, and over 68,000 nautical miles in a thousand days at sea