O Ring Seal Challenger

Morton thiokol discovered that both o rings booster sealers had malfunctioned which led to the fuel tank blowing up.

O ring seal challenger.

Number of o ring incidents vs. Months after the disaster the cause was revealed. Making challenger made watching the spacex launch earlier this year a. Strong wind shear that began 37 seconds into flight then tore the seal back open resulting in the catastrophic breakup.

On the morning of the launch the cold rubber became stiff. Perhaps most concerning was the launch of sts 51 b in april 1985 flown by challenger in which the worst o ring damage to date was discovered in post flight analysis. A crucial factor was cold weather prior to the launch. The challenger itself didn t technically explode but rather disintegrated from the result of the o ring malfunction.

The failure of an o ring seal was determined to be the cause of the space shuttle challenger disaster on january 28 1986. Field joints containing rubber o ring seals were installed between each fuel segment. Challenger was destroyed due to a faulty o ring seal in one of its booster rockets allowing burning gas to escape. The o rings were never tested in extreme cold.

An o ring seal had failed at launch but the hole was quickly resealed by aluminum oxides before any flames could escape and cause an explosion. The following months were anything but easy for mcdonald. This was famously demonstrated on television by caltech physics professor richard feynman when he placed a small o ring into ice cold water and subsequently showed its loss of flexibility before an investigative. O ring seals failed causing leaks in the right booster rocket.

Joint temperature incidents when o rings failed source. Report of the presidential commission on the space shuttle challenger accident 6 june 1986 volume 1 page 145 link color added. The primary o ring of the left nozzle had been eroded so extensively that it had failed to seal and for the first time hot gases had eroded the secondary o ring. The crew members cabin remained in tact but fell to the atlantic ocean at approximately 200 miles per hour.