An unexpected discovery. Divers looking to find the remains of a World War II plane for a documentary about disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle have instead discovered a vessel of an entirely different kind on the sea floor: a part of the space shuttle. Challenger.
In 1986, this shuttle had exploded a few tens of seconds after taking off in Florida, killing all seven crew members, including Professor Christa McAuliffe. The segment, remarkably preserved at the bottom of the Atlantic, is one of the largest pieces found after this tragedy that marked space history, NASA confirmed Thursday.
“They were amazed by the size of the piece”
In images filming their discovery, made in the spring of 2022, two divers surrounded by fish reveal the shuttle’s iconic heat shield tiles beneath the sand. These small black squares covered the entire bottom of the ship, to allow it to withstand the infernal heat during its return to the atmosphere.
One of the two divers, Mike Barnette, told AFP he experienced an “emotional roller coaster” when he realized what he was touching. “When we found it, it was a lot of different emotions,” recalls this marine biologist, whose hobby is exploring shipwrecks at the bottom of the water. “I’m used to diving among wrecks that are tens or even hundreds of years old, but not one end of the space program!”
“I quickly realized it was something I had been through. When (the accident) happened, I remember exactly where he was, watching it live on television,” she said.
After his dive, he shows the images taken to an astronaut friend, who confirms his discovery. Then, a few months later, NASA confirmed that it was indeed the Challenger shuttle. “They were amazed at the size of the piece,” he says.
The exact location of the remains is being kept secret.
The visible part is about 4.5 meters by 4.5. But the piece extends under the sand, buried, and we do not know its total size at the moment. One thing is certain, “it is one of the largest ever found,” Mike Ciannilli, a NASA employee for more than 25 years, mainly on the space shuttle program, told AFP.
The exact location of the find has not been revealed so as not to attract the curious, but it is off the coast. According to the explorer, it would be “very easy” for NASA to extract the piece from the water, but that gesture could also “reopen wounds.”
A step forward for the investigation of the explosion?
Six shuttles were built in all, one of which had never been in space. It’s definitely the bottom of the Challenger, Mike Ciannilli explained, but it’s hard to tell exactly which part of the ship.
According to him, the analysis of this piece a priori will not contribute anything new to the investigation of the accident itself, of which “he will never forget” what he saw when he was very young. In fact, the causes of the tragedy are already well established (joints were frozen overnight). Observing how the materials have aged could still be interesting. But above all, he stresses, Challenger’s memory should help revive the “lessons learned from this mission.”
After the accident, on January 28, 1986, extensive operations were carried out to find parts of the ship. Ten years later, two new ones had reappeared on a beach, after a storm. These were the last found so far. Only one piece is on display in a memorial open to the public at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and the others are kept nearby.
Source: BFM TV
