CASE STUDY: THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER DISASTER

Introduction To The Case: On January 28, 1986, seven astronauts were killed when the space shuttle they were piloting, the Challenger, exploded just over a minute into the flight. The failure of the solid rocket booster O-rings to seat properly allowed hot combustion gases to leak from the side of the booster and burn through the externalfuel tank. The failure of the O-ring was attributed to severalfactors, including faulty design of the solid rocket boosters, insufficient low- temperature testing of the O-ring material and the joints that the O-ring sealed, and lack of proper communication between different levels of NASA management.

General Guidelines for Students:

• A material has been provided that explains all the details and consecutive incidents took place related to the space shuttle disaster. Read the material thorougly to understand, analyze the challenger disaster case.
• After reading the material and getting a holistic understanding about the entire case, you will see some questions at the end of the material. Answer those questions by using your ethical judgements and understanding as a future engineer. Discuss in brief to build up your logics which must be relevent to the case. 
• Each of the students have to submit the assignment individually in the BLC Assignment Portal. 
• You can write your answers on A4 paper, scan it and make a pdf. Or you can type your answers. The choice is yours.

N.B. If you have any doubt or problem in understanding the case related events, you can ask me in the following counseling hours: Saturday: 8:30AM - 9:30AM;  Sunday: 8:30AM - 9:30AM