What is the time difference between the Challenger loss and the Columbia disaster?
Answer
More than seventeen years.
The loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger occurred on January 28, 1986, and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster happened on February 1, 2003. Calculating the span between these two dates reveals that a period of more than seventeen years elapsed between these two catastrophic in-flight failures involving a complete vehicle breakup during a US manned spaceflight mission. This considerable time gap emphasizes the rarity of such extreme events in the program's operational history.

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