Challenger at 40: Lessons from a tragedy

Up First from NPR · Jan 25, 2026 · 56m

Forty years ago, the 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…