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

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.

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.

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 just an explosion, but it carried with it the baggage of hubris, bureaucracy and seven dead astronauts.

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.

Freelancer Joe Rimkus Jr., a long-time Miami Herald staff photographer, captured the moment in an image widely circulated by Reuters. Unlike the unruliness of Challenger’s unplanned explosion, the Falcon 9 explosion appears almost orderly. It's the emerging phoenix. The cloud cover mutes the color palette, turning the image into something almost painterly.