While participating in the investigation into the destruction of "Challenger" during STS-51-L in 1986, Overmyer discovered that a problem with the shuttle's O-rings, similar to that which led to the disaster, had emerged during the launch of STS-51-B. Morton Thiokol engineers told Lind after the mission that "you came within three-tenths of one second of dying." It was the problem with the O-rings on the left solid rocket motor on this launch (SRM 16A) that prompted Roger Boisjoly to write a memo to Bob Lund about the potential for the O-rings to cause catastrophic failure. (See )