No, the NASA astronauts killed in the 1986 Challenger disaster are not still alive

Claims that the deaths of seven NASA astronauts in the Challenger space shuttle disaster were faked have been shared online. This is false.

An Instagram video, which has over 3,000 likes and hundreds of shares, states that the 1986 mid-air break up of the Challenger shuttle was a hoax and that everyone on board the spacecraft has since been found alive. The man in the video says that this has been “proven in court” and cuts to footage of another man presenting “evidence” that crew members were found years later.

However, this footage actually shows a member of the public speaking at a May 2024 meeting of Brevard County Commission, which is a local government branch serving the east coast of central Florida, including the Kennedy Space Center. It doesn’t show something being proven in court as suggested.

What happened to the Challenger astronauts?

According to media reports at the time, recovered remains of all seven Challenger astronauts were found after the crash. A report from NASA stated that causes of death could not be positively determined as “the impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface was so violent that evidence of damage occurring in the seconds which followed the explosion was masked”.

The claims in the video centre around online posts which allege that certain individuals who have similar names and somewhat resemble the Challenger crew are actually the same people.

The speaker specifically references three astronauts who were on board; Judith A. Resnik, Michael J. Smith, and Francis R. Scobee. He says that sightings of their so-called “doppelgangers” years after the disaster are proof they are still alive.

This includes claims that Ms Resnik is now a professor at Yale, Mr Smith is a retired professor from the University of Wisconsin, and Mr Scobee is the president of a company called Cows in Trees. There is no evidence to say these are the same people apart from sharing names.

Records of the astronauts and the civilians that have been falsely linked to them do not match up. For example, the astronaut Ms Resnik received a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1977 and was selected as a NASA astronaut the following year.

Meanwhile Professor Resnik joined Yale Law school as a lecturer in 1977, worked at the University of Southern California for 17 years and then returned to Yale in 1997 where she still appears to work.

Similarly, the university professor Michael Smith’s obituary stated that he earned his degree in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968 and later completed his PhD in 1973.

The Challenger pilot Mr Smith graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1967. Over the next five years, he attended the Naval Postgraduate School in California, completed Navy aviation jet training in Texas and was deployed to Vietnam.

Official investigations into the Challenger accident concluded that the reason the space shuttle broke apart was due to the failure of a pressure seal located on the shuttle’s right-hand solid rocket booster, which caused a combustion gas leak.

The 1986 US House of Representatives report said it was “convinced that the accident was not survivable”. A transcript of the Challenger voice recorder tape, released by NASA, shows voice activity from the crew members prior to launch up until 73 seconds into the flight, when the shuttle broke apart and loss of all data occurred.

Full Fact has previously checked other false claims about space missions, including a fake image of the moon which was not taken as part of the Artemis II mission and a real NASA video which was digitally altered to add a man drinking and waving on the International Space Station.