Joe Rimkus Jr.'s Hopeful Photo of an Exploding Rocket

<p>On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during liftoff due to a faulty O-ring design on the rocket booster which allowed hot gas to ignite a fuel tank. STS-51-L was the 25th space shuttle mission, and in the mid-1980s, launches still captured public attention and imagination.<br/><br/>On hand that day was photographer Bruce Weaver, who has been a mainstay of Cape Canaveral launches for over 30 years. Although the NASA video of the tragedy was available immediately, the grainy, low-resolution video couldn’t hold a candle to the still image that Weaver captured. <br/><br/>Weaver’s image perfectly captured a major inflection point for NASA and space travel. NASA grounded the program for three years, and there was a palpable sense that the heroic age of space flight had ended. The image was <em>just</em> an explosion, but it carried with it the baggage of hubris, bureaucracy and seven dead astronauts.<br/><br/>On Sunday, January 19, 2020, Elon Musk blew up a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on purpose to test a crew escape system – and I’ve never felt so hopeful after seeing a photo of an explosion.<br/><br/>Freelancer <a href='https://www.facebook.com/joe.rimkus.3'>Joe Rimkus Jr.</a>, a long-time Miami Herald staff photographer, <a href='https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/science/spacex-launch.html'>captured the moment</a> in an image widely circulated by Reuters. Unlike the unruliness of Challenger’s unplanned explosion, the Falcon 9 explosion appears almost orderly. It&apos;s the emerging phoenix. The cloud cover mutes the color palette, turning the image into something almost painterly. </p>