17 Years Ago In TIME

Many Americans watched the explosion of the space shuttle CHALLENGER live on television. Teacher Christa McAuliffe and six others were aboard. The image of the fireball and trails of smoke inspired disbelief:

"Where in hell is the bird? Where is the bird?" shouted a space engineer at Cape Canaveral. "Oh, my God!" cried a teacher from the viewing stands nearby. "Don't let happen what I think just happened." Nancy Reagan, watching television in the White House family quarters, gasped similar words. "It exploded," murmured Brian French, a senior at Concord High School in New Hampshire, as the noisy auditorium fell quiet. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., scientists turned away from their remarkable new photographs of the distant planet Uranus and stared, stunned, at the telecast from Florida. "We all knew it could happen one day," said one, "but, God, who would have believed it?" It had happened. In one fiery instant, the nation's complacent attitude toward manned space flight had evaporated at the incredible sight in the skies over Cape Canaveral. --TIME, Feb. 10, 1986