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365 Photo Project 2010 – Day 41

Day 41 – Wednesday 10th February 2010

#365 | Day 41 - "Trinity Street Junction" - Bolton, England

Thursday 11th February 2010, 15:15 | Tags: #365 | Category: #365 Photo Project 2010 | Leave a comment

365 Photo Project 2010 – Day 40

Day 40 – Tuesday 9th February 2010

#365 | Day 40 - "Chimney at Barrow Bridge" - Moss Bank Park, Bolton, England

Taken from Moss Bank Park in Bolton, a view of the old cotton mill chimney at Barrow Bridge.

Tuesday 9th February 2010, 17:11 | Tags: #365, Barrow Bridge, Moss Bank Park | Category: #365 Photo Project 2010 | Leave a comment

365 Photo Project 2010 – Days 38 and 39

Day 38 – Sunday 7th February 2010

#365 | Day 38 - "Fog Lamp" - Atherton, England

Day 39 – Monday 8th February 2010

#365 | Day 39 - "Dark Clouds Gathering" - Bolton, England

Monday 8th February 2010, 23:22 | Tags: #365 | Category: #365 Photo Project 2010 | Leave a comment

Challenger

I was the same age as my daughter is now when the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, on the 26th January, 1986 at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 GMT).

On that fateful day, optometrist Jack Moss raised his new Betamax video camera to the sky over central Florida. The subsequent recording was turned over to an educational organisation a week before his death in December 2009. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the previously unseen footage into the public domain.

I remember going into school the next day carrying my Space Shuttle book and was completely distraught that nobody was as upset as I was. I simply couldn’t understand it. I recall telling my class teacher that Christa McAuliffe was a teacher too but she shooed me away saying “it’s nothing to do with us, we’re not Americans”. I was absolutely disgusted. To me the crew of Challenger STS-51-L were not only American heroes but women and men who died in a valiant attempt to expand human knowledge. As such the disaster had everything to do with everyone, American or otherwise.

STS-51-L crew: (front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair; (back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.

Monday 8th February 2010, 23:00 | Tags: Challenger, NASA, Space Shuttle | Category: Online Resources | Leave a comment