Former director of the Alabama NASA center during the Challenger space shuttle explosion dies at 102

The man who led a NASA facility that shouldered much of the blame for the 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion has died. William Ray Lucas was 102. Laughlin Service Funeral Home director Bryan Peek said Saturday that Lucas died Monday at his home in Huntsville, Alabama. Lucas was director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville when the Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida. He resigned months later after a presidential commission blamed a design fault in the shuttle’s booster rockets for the disaster. The Marshall center had supervised development of the rockets.

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