Screens flashed
NZPA-Reuter Houston When the space shuttle Challenger exploded into a fireball seen by millions on television screens, engineers at the space programme’s nerve centre saw merely a burst of flashing asterisks on their screens.
The asterisks, punctuated by the letter “s,” appeared on the computer screens of the engineers and technicians interpreting the mass of figures and telemetry at the Johnson Space Centre, mission control for all United States space flights.
But the asterisks were as bright as the blazing explosion in the sky, and they meant the same thing — Challenger was no more.
The letter “s” signified static transmission — the abrupt end of communications.
But Space Centre clocks continued to tick off each second of what would have been the elapsed mission time of the doomed flight. Many of the 2000 employees at the centre were horrified at the accident.
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Press, 30 January 1986, Page 3
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143Screens flashed Press, 30 January 1986, Page 3
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