space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. Seven

astronauts were killed, including teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe. It

was a devastating blow to the U.S. space program and a national tragedy

for the country. In the days after the explosion, the search for

answers began. Two NPR reporters, Howard Berkes and Daniel Zwerdling,

focused their reporting on the engineers who managed Challenger’s

booster rockets. On February 20, 1986, Berkes and Zwerdling broke a

major story, providing the first details of a last-minute effort by

those engineers to stop NASA from launching Challenger. 

In

this special NPR documentary, Howard Berkes unfolds an investigation

spanning forty years, from those desperate efforts in 1986 to delay the

launch, to decades of crushing guilt for some of the engineers, and to

the lessons learned that are as critical as ever as NASA’s budget and

workforce shrink.

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