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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Flowers are placed at the Astronauts Memorial Foundation's Space Mirror Memorial at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on the 28th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger accident. The day of the accident in 1986 dawned bitterly cold. Temperatures hovered just a few degrees above freezing as Challenger and its seven astronauts lifted off on the STS-51L mission. The flight ended just 73 seconds later when an O-ring in the right solid rocket booster failed, causing a fireball that led to the loss of the vehicle and crew: Commander Francis Scobee, Pilot Michael Smith, Mission Specialists Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka and Ronald McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory Jarvis and Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a teacher. To learn more about the Space Shuttle Program, visit http:__www.nasa.gov_mission_pages_shuttle_main_index.html. To read the astronauts' NASA biographies, visit http:__www.jsc.nasa.gov_Bios_astrobio_former.html. For information about the AMF, visit http:__www.astronautsmemorial.org_home.html. Photo credit: NASA_Dimitri Gerondidakis