Space Shuttle Challenger disaster buried in Rest Lawn Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina. Christa McAuliffe's remains are buried at Calvary Cemetery in her hometown of Concord, New Hampshire. Gregory Jarvis was cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Unidentified crew remains were buried communally at the Space Shuttle "Challenger" Memorial in Arlington on May 20, 1986. As a result of the disaster, several National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellites that only the shuttle could launch were grounded because of the accident. This is a dilemma NRO had feared since the 1970s when the shuttle was designated as the United States' primary
Space Shuttle Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was "Space Transportation System (STS)", taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. In addition to the prototype whose completion was cancelled, five complete Shuttle systems were built and used on a total of 135