Dow High School - Charger Yearbook (Midland, MI)

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4 l an W 1 'R Sf. ff' '5F'FlIIE EHLITTL TF: GED Gregory Jarvis Christa McAuliffe Ronald McNair Ellison Onizuka Judith Resnik Francis Scobee Michael Smith Americans have traveled into space 55 times over the past 25 years - their safe return has been taken for granted. An age - when almost anyone could ride in a spacecraft with a safe return - was ready to begin. Christa McAuliffe, a high school social studies teacher in Concord, N.H., was to be the first ordinary citizen to be launched into space. The preparation for the Challenger's tenth journey into space had been pains- takingly slow. The group, including two women, a black, a Hawaiian of Japa- nese descent, were ready to go. But then disaster struck. The Challenger, with barely a minute into its flight on Tuesday, January 28, I986 exploded and seven astro- nauts disappeared in an or- ange and white fireball nine miles above the Atlantic Gcean. The reaction was shock. horror and grief. The trage- dy brought a nation togeth- er in mourning. It also brought admiration for those who explore the heavens. Despite the horrors of the last spacecraft, the Chal- lenger catastrophe built American determination to push on and continue the quest in space.

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