Menallen Township native who rode into space reflects on 30th anniversary of Challenger tragedy
Photo courtesy NASA
Menallen Township native Bob Cenker is part of this flying human chain of prime and backup payload specialists shown in this photo taken during Zero-G training in November 1985 for two then-upcoming STS missions. The group shared some 40 parabolas in NASA’s KC-135, Zero-G aircraft. Pictured are (from left) Gerard Magilton, RCA backup payload specialist for STS-61C, Columbia; Sharon Christa McAuliffe, payload specialist/teacher citizen observer for STS-51L, Challenger; U.S. Rep, Bill Nelson, D-Florida, scheduled for 61C, Columbia; Barbara R. Morgan, backup to McAuliffe; and Robert J. Cenker, RCA payload specialist for 61C, Columbia. McAuliffe died aboard Challenger when it exploded 30 years ago today.
This photograph of Bob Cenker was taken in Scotland in 2013, supporting an education program.
This is a bittersweet month for Menallen Township native Bob Cenker.
Thirty years ago, the aerospace engineer flew into outer space on a six-day mission as an astronaut aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. The exhilaration of the mission is something Cenker has never forgotten.
“Gravity is a drag. If I could take Barbara (his wife) and move into space, I’d be gone now,” said Cenker, 67, of New Jersey. “I’m not sure what’s better: zero gravity or looking out the window.”
But the success of this mission was soon overshadowed by tragedy, being remembered today on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.
Cenker returned to Earth with Columbia on Jan. 18, 1986. Ten days later, Space Shuttle Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, exploding just 73 seconds after take off and killing the seven-member crew. The nation went into mourning.
“It really hit me hard,” said Cenker, who was then working for RCA and learned of the news as he listened to a radio while on an airplane flight to Los Angeles. “The guy next to me knew something was wrong. I told him the Challenger blew up and I had trained with them. I flew on the last shuttle. He got the stewardess. RCA had people on the ground waiting for me to help out.”
Cenker trained with two of Challenger’s astronauts: Gregory Jarvis, 41, who grew up in New York, and Christa McAuliffe, 37, of New Hampshire, who was selected to be the first teacher in space.
“During our several months of training together, they were as enthusiastic and excited about space flight and exploration as I am,” Cenker noted. “They understood the risks associated with space flight — no one ever said it was ‘safe’ — and felt, as did everyone else in the program that I met, that the benefits outweighed the risks.”
He added, “In all of the pressure of training, with the ever-present possibilities of mission cancellation, re-assignment or even a simple minor injury that might have kept someone from flying, there was always a sense of cooperation, of working together so that everyone might get their chance and contribute to a successful mission.”
A 1966 graduate of Uniontown Area High School, Cenker spent his freshman year at Penn State Fayette before moving on to Penn State’s main campus where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering in 1970 and 1973. He later received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Rutger’s University in New Jersey. Married 41 years, the Cenkers have two sons and a daughter and one grandson.
Self-employed since 1990, Cenker was employed by RCA when he was selected to be a payload specialist and approved by NASA for Space Shuttle Mission 61-C. He took a banner from Uniontown High School with him into space.
The NASA website explained Cenker “performed a variety of physiological tests, observed the deployment of the RCA Satcom Ku-1 satellite, and operated a primary experiment, an infrared imaging camera. In completing this flight, Mr. Cenker traveled over 2.1 million miles in 96 Earth orbits and logged over 146 hours in space.”
The pilot on Cenker’s mission, Charles F. Bolden Jr., is now administrator of NASA. Bolden will be among officials paying tribute today to the crews of Challenger, Apollo 1, whose crew perished in a flash fire during a test aboard their spacecraft on Jan. 27, 1967; and Columbia, the shuttle on which Cenker flew that was lost on Feb. 1, 2003. Foam insulation that ripped from the shuttle on launch led to Columbia disintegrating in the skies above Texas as it returned to Earth after a 16-day mission, killing the seven-member crew.
These tragedies reflect Cenker’s concerns during his mission: that disaster might occur on the launch pad or when re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
“What happened to Challenger never crossed my mind,” he said of the explosion that was later found to be caused by a failed O-ring in a solid rocket booster.
Following the Challenger disaster, Cenker was also surprised to find himself caught in a media frenzy. He called home to reach his wife, only to discover a neighbor answering the phone who told Cenker a TV van was parked in his driveway and he had more than 50 messages from media who wanted to talk to him.
“RCA offered to have my phone number changed, but I didn’t think we needed to do that. I thought we’d ride it out,” Cenker said. “I’m not a celebrity. I’m a working engineer fortunate enough to be in the right position at the right time. Within a week, the media were gone.”
NASA ended the space shuttle program in 2011 and is now working with private industry to develop new spacecraft as America continues to send astronauts into space.
Cenker, who still has relatives in the area and was last home in the fall when Uniontown Area High School inducted him into its Hall of Fame, keeps up with news of the space program.
“I don’t do social media, but I just saw Scott Kelly playing ping pong with a water ball. It’s great video. There’s a lot of science in that,” said Cenker, referring to Kelly, a NASA astronaut who is involved in an historic year-in-space program on the International Space Station.
Cenker believes the year-in-space program is “an excellent idea. I’m a huge believer in manned space flight, but Mars is going to be there. I’m a believer in crawling before walking and walking before running. We need to establish ourselves as inhabitants of space before we go off to that major mission.”
At the 30th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy, Cenker believes America should remember those heroes but continue to explore.
“I was looking today at a poster of the Wright Brothers, thinking of all the people who died trying to fly before they succeeded. I’m Catholic. I believe life is sacred,” he said. “But I also believe exploration is in the human gene and is what brought us out of the stone ages. To walk away from exploration because of the tragedy would be denying the worth of what they died doing.”