Space Shuttle Challenger  was NASA’s second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia being the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, on January 28, 1986, resulting in the death of all seven crew members. The break up was ultimately due to the failure of an O-ring on its right solid-fuel rocket booster (SRB). The failure was due to a variety of factors, including unusually low temperatures prior to liftoff.

The accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet. The  missions resumed in 1988 with the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery.

    
                                                 The Challenger crew

   
                                                

             Challenger memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia

          Doolittle’s grave marker at Arlington National Cemetery.

Doolittle lifting off from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet
on April 18, 1942, the famous raid on Tokyo.

The U.S. Marine Corps memorial, depicting the raising of the American
Flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, located in Arlington, VA.
Photographer Joe Rosenthal’s famous picture of the raising of the
American Flag on Iwo Jima by U.S. Marines, February 23, 1945.