<P> 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. : </P>
who gave the address to the nation on the challenger disaster in january 1986
President Ronald Reagan