Jan. 28 marks the 20th anniversary of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle accident that killed NASA astronauts Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Hughes corporate payload specialist Greg Jarvis and teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe. Nearly 18 months before the Challenger accident, the Thiokol solid-rocket boosters used on Discovery's Mission 41D experienced the first major "blow-by" of gases around O-ring seals— the same problem that later doomed Challenger. Former astronaut USAF Col. (ret.) Mike Mullane, a mission specialist on that Discovery flight, describes his experience from the perspective of post-Challenger hindsight in this exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming book, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut.
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