New Video of Challenger Disaster Surfaces After 24 Years

On a chilly January morning 24 years ago, Corydon optometrist Jack Moss raised his new video camera to the sky over central Florida and captured one of the darkest moments in American space exploration the explosion of the shuttle Challenger.

In the videotape, a stream of white smoke behind the climbing shuttle shoots into view but Moss, his wife and a neighbor noticed immediately that More..something was amiss when the channel separated into two streams.

Thats trouble of some kind, Moss can be heard saying. That didnt look right.

Moments later, someone is heard telling Moss that the Challenger had blown up.

From Louisville Courier Journal

More info:
The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available.

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“High Flight”

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; sunward Ive climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence. Hovring there, Ive chased the shouting wind along, and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue Ive topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace — where never lark nor even eagle flew — and, while with silent lifting mind Ive trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
~John Gillespie Magee Jr.

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