CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Recorded conversations among Challenger's crew members during their fatal 73-second flight began with words of exultation and ended abruptly with an ominous 'uh oh' the moment the shuttle exploded, a transcript showed Monday.
The transcript, made public by NASA, shows the crew was excited during the thunderous climb to space, especially astronaut Judith Resnik and co-pilot Michael Smith once Challenger's twin solid-fuel boosters fired at 11:38 a.m. EST on Jan. 28 to begin liftoff.
'There they go, guys,' commander Francis 'Dick' Scobee said when Challenger's three liquid-fueled main engines fired up six seconds before liftoff.
'All right!' Resnik said.
'Three at 100 percent (power),' Scobee said as the countdown clock neared zero. With solid-fuel rocket ignition, Resnik repeated herself: 'All right.'
Eleven seconds after launch, co-pilot Michael Smith said: 'Go you mother!' as Challenger rolled about its vertical axis to align itself with the proper trajectory.
He repeated himself 13 seconds before the explosion, exclaiming 'Feel that mother go,' and an unidentified crew member responded: 'Woooo hoooo.'
But the final comment recorded before the crew cabin lost power during the break up of the shuttle was Smith's, who said 'Uh oh...'
'There could have been something in the cockpit that could have caused that remark, or it could have been first awareness of the explosion,' Rear Adm. Richard Truly, chief of the shuttle program, said at a news conference in Washington.
New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe, satellite engineer Gregory Jarvis and astronaut Ronald McNair did not say anything during the launch or the two minutes preceding liftoff. The other crew member was astronaut Ellison Onizuka.
The transcript was based on a tape recovered from a data recorder at the crash site of Challenger's crew module that later was restored by engineers after its six-week stay on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
The tape included the few crew comments made on Challenger's intercom system and not broadcast to mission control by the shuttle's 'air-to-ground' radio system.
The last public air-to-ground comment from a crew member came about 70 seconds after blastoff when Scobee calmly acknowledged the shuttle's three main engines were operating at 104 percent power as planned.
'Roger, go at throttle up,' Scobee said. The shuttle disintegrated in a giant fireball about three seconds later. The only other public comment by a crew member came just seconds after launch when Scobee told mission control Challenger was rolling properly to attain the correct trajectory.
Smith's wife, Jane, has filed a $15 million suit against NASA, alleging the agency was negligent launching Challenger given past concern about the safety of the shuttle's booster rockets and that Smith lived long enough to realize his impending doom.
Truly said the cause or time of death could not be determined.
The recording was made by operational recorder No. 2, found in March by divers at the cabin crash site some 18 miles off shore in 100 feet of water. The device recorded data from Challenger's various flight systems along with two air-to-ground voice communications channels.
Normally, the two 'ops recorders' are played back after landing to fill in gaps in shuttle coverage by ground stations and the shuttle tracking satellite.
Both of Challenger's ops recorders were flown to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., March 16 where the tapes were submerged in clear, cold water for cleaning and then dried in a thermal vacuum chamber. The tapes later were taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis.
In an interview, astronaut Don Williams, a veteran shuttle pilot, said Challenger's crew had no instrumentation in the cockpit to indicate the 'burn through' of the shuttle's right-side booster rocket that triggered the explosion of the spaceship's external fuel tank.
Challenger co-pilot Smith was monitoring liquid hydrogen pressure in the giant external tank. While the instruments may have indicated the massive leak caused when the flame from the booster burned through the tank, it is doubtful Smith had time to respond before the shuttle broke apart.
'I've thought about it a lot and I don't think they knew anything,' Williams said of the instrument readings in the cockpit.
