It was just a practice ball, a little scuffed up and not the best brand. All week, the team had been passing around a ball to sign. In January 1986, "Rocky IV" was in theaters, gas was 93 cents per gallon and Janelle Onizuka was sitting through her sophomore classes at Clear Lake, waiting to get to soccer practice. Its campus is just 4 miles from Johnson Space Center in Houston, and many of the Falcons have at least one parent whose paycheck comes from NASA. But at 11:39 a.m., it became a relic.ĬLEAR LAKE HIGH School is perhaps the only place in the country where it's not all that strange to be the child of an astronaut. As the crew buckled into their seats and countdown progressed, it was just a ball. 28, 1986, and found something else for breakfast, the ball sat in Ellison's locker on board the shuttle. There on Lorna's television, inside the 4.4 million-pound launchpad assembly, inside the space shuttle, inside the crew cabin, inside a locker, inside a black duffel bag, was a soccer ball.Īs the Onizuka girls woke up on Jan. "I guess we're going to launch tomorrow," Ellison said on the other end of the telephone.
#CHALLENGER SPACE SHUTTLE HUMAN REMAINS TV#
Lorna turned on the TV at the house they had rented for the occasion and relayed what she saw: The 10th flight of the space shuttle Challenger was a go. It was late, later than her husband, Ellison, should have been up, but he was restless inside the crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center and wanted to know whether there was news about tomorrow. This would become important later, but for now, it affected only breakfast. The temperature that night in Cape Canaveral, Florida, dropped to 18 degrees, well below the average low of 50. She and their two daughters, Janelle and Darien, wouldn't be able to have cereal the next morning because she'd left the milk on the porch and it was frozen solid. THE LAST TIME Lorna Onizuka spoke to her husband, she mentioned milk. This story, about the soccer ball that survived, was originally published on June 29, 2018. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, and all seven members of the crew were killed.
NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka's soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosionĮditor's note: Thirty-five years ago, on Jan.
#CHALLENGER SPACE SHUTTLE HUMAN REMAINS UPGRADE#
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