10 Dollars Space Shuttle - Challenger

The Marshall Islands began issuing commemorative circulation coinage in 1986, and by the mid-1990s had built an extensive program targeting the collector market rather than domestic commerce. This Challenger piece appeared a decade after the orbiter broke apart 73 seconds into mission STS-51-L on January 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. The disaster grounded the shuttle program for nearly three years and triggered the Rogers Commission investigation, which traced the failure to O-ring seals on the right solid rocket booster in 31-degree launch temperatures.