<P> President Reagan would further mention the Challenger crew members at the beginning of his State of the Union address on February 4 . </P> <P> In the first minutes after the accident, recovery efforts were begun by NASA's Launch Recovery Director, who ordered the ships normally used by NASA for recovery of the solid rocket boosters to be sent to the location of the water impact . Search and rescue aircraft were also dispatched . At this stage debris was still falling, and the Range Safety Officer (RSO) held both aircraft and ships out of the impact area until it was considered safe for them to enter . It was about an hour until the RSO allowed the recovery forces to begin their work . </P> <P> The search and rescue operations that took place in the first week after the Challenger accident were managed by the Department of Defense on behalf of NASA, with assistance from the United States Coast Guard, and mostly involved surface searches . According to the Coast Guard, "the operation was the largest surface search in which they had participated ." This phase of operations lasted until February 7 . In order to discourage scavengers, NASA did not disclose the exact location of the debris field, instead referring to it by the cryptic code name "Target 67". This was impossible to keep secret for any length of time and Radio Shacks in the Cape Canaveral area were soon completely sold out of radios that could tune into the frequency used by Coast Guard vessels . Thereafter, recovery efforts were managed by a Search, Recovery, and Reconstruction team; its aim was to salvage debris that would help in determining the cause of the accident . Sonar, divers, remotely operated submersibles and manned submersibles were all used during the search, which covered an area of 486 square nautical miles (1,670 km), and took place at water depths between 70 feet (21 m) and 1,200 feet (370 m). On March 7, divers from the USS Preserver identified what might be the crew compartment on the ocean floor . The finding, along with discovery of the remains of all seven crew members, was confirmed the next day and on March 9, NASA announced the finding to the press . The crew cabin was severely crushed and fragmented from the extreme impact forces; one member of the search team described it as "largely a pile of rubble with wires protruding from it". The largest intact section was the rear wall containing the two payload bay windows and the airlock . All windows in the cabin had been destroyed, with only small bits of glass still attached to the frames . Impact forces appeared to be greatest on the left side, indicating that it had struck the water in a nose - down, left - end first position . </P> <P> Inside the twisted debris of the crew cabin were the bodies of the astronauts, which after weeks of immersion in salt water and exposure to scavenging marine life were in a "semi-liquefied state that bore little resemblance to anything living", although according to John Devlin, the skipper of the USS Preserver, they "were not as badly mangled as you'd see in some aircraft accidents". Lt. Cmdr James Simpson of the Coast Guard reported finding a helmet with ears and a scalp in it . Judith Resnik was the first to be removed followed by Christa McAuliffe, with more remains retrieved over several hours . Due to the hazardous nature of the recovery operation (the cabin was filled with large pieces of protruding jagged metal), the Navy divers protested that they would not go on with the work unless the cabin was hauled onto the ship's deck . </P>

Where did space shuttle challenger take off from