Challenger at 40: Lessons from a tragedy
Up First from NPR
NPR
4.6 • 59K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
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Summary
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 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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Here at NPR, we've been following the news unfolding of the Minneapolis protests, including the recent shooting and killing of a 37-year-old man Saturday morning by federal agents. |
| 0:13.1 | That's the third shooting and second death in Minneapolis involving federal immigration officials in January. |
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| 0:23.4 | when Up First returns tomorrow. |
| 0:29.2 | I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story, |
| 0:32.5 | where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. |
| 0:37.6 | On the morning of January 28, 1986, Bob Ebling was anxious and angry as he drove to work |
| 0:44.4 | to the Morton-Thiakal booster rocket complex outside Brigham City, Utah. |
| 0:50.2 | He knew that 2,000 miles away at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, |
| 0:55.2 | ICE had formed on the launch pad that cradled the space shuttle Challenger. |
| 1:00.5 | Seven astronauts, including a civilian, a high school teacher, |
| 1:04.8 | were set for liftoff that morning. |
| 1:07.8 | Ebling believed their lives were at stake. |
| 1:10.7 | His daughter Leslie was in the car with him. |
| 1:13.4 | And he said, we are going to have a catastrophic event today. |
| 1:22.1 | The night before, Ebling and his Thial call colleagues, all booster rocket engineers, argued for a launch delay. |
| 1:30.1 | They said the freezing weather overnight could cause a catastrophic failure in the booster rockets |
| 1:35.9 | that would lift Challenger towards space. |
| 1:39.3 | And he said, the Challenger's going to blow up. |
| 1:42.2 | Everyone's going to die. |
| 1:45.1 | And he was beating his hands on the dashboard. |
| 1:51.1 | He was frantic. |
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