In July 1985, he had warned NASA in a memo that if the weather was too cold, seals connecting sections of the space shuttle's huge rocket boosters could fail. He had pleaded with NASA to postpone the launching of the Challenger Space Shuttle on January 28, 1986 due to the unusually cold weather in Cape Canaveral, Florida that day, however officials went on with the launch. The Challenger exploded in the skies over Florida 73 seconds after it launched.
