On the night of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give his annual State of the Union address. He initially announced that the address would go on as scheduled, but then postponed the State of the Union address for a week and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster from the Oval Office of the White House. It was written by Peggy Noonan, and was listed as one of the most significant speeches of the 20th century in a survey of 137 communication scholars. It finished with the following statement, which quoted from the poem "High Flight '' by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.:
who gave the address to the nation on the challenger disaster in january 1986
President Ronald Reagan