"Go for throttle up". Whether you’re old enough to have been around or whether you watched the videos in history class, we all remember those words on January 28th 1986.
The final words of the astronauts aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle moments before it exploded in the skies above the coast of Florida.
It was NASA’s first in-flight tragedy in the U.S. space program and it remains one of those events like the Kennedy assassination before it and 9-11 after it that become markers in our lives.
Where were we when we heard and what did we do?
Questions most everyone will think about and talk about it today. The sights and sounds of that day remain.
At the time, on that January morning, the launch of the Challenger was not a big deal as it prepared to take off. Space shuttle launches had become so normal and so routine, there was no more automatic live radio and TV coverage of them.
It was unexpected and it shocked us. And at the time, it united us in grief.
Life has always been uncertain but when disasters like, most recently, the fires in Los Angeles happen, they can be reminders that even during this time when we are divided politically, we can still be united as a people in the spirit of those Challenger astronauts many years ago.
(Photo Getty Images)