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And liftoff, liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle Mission, and it has cleared the tower.

On January 28, 1986, the 25th Space Shuttle Mission Challenger left the launch pad in Cape Canaveral.

There's a crowd of people watching, and you can hear them clapping and cheering as the shuttle leaves the pad.

And then, 73 seconds into flight?

The shuttle disintegrates.

That's Adam Higginbotham, a journalist who spent years reporting on the Challenger disaster.

And he says that even as the people watch the shuttle burst into flames.

There are still a lot of people in the crowd who are still clapping and cheering.

Because they think or they want to think that this is part of a normal launch process.

And at the same time, you can hear Steve Nesbit, who was the commentator from NASA,

who was sitting in Mission Control in Houston, you know, continuing to read out the data

about the speed of the shuttle and its altitude.

It's 15 seconds, velocity 2,900 feet per second altitude, 9 nautical miles, downrange distance, 7 nautical miles.

Even as the shuttle itself has already disappeared into this blossoming orange cloud of burning rocket fuel.

And then static.

We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.

The flight director confirms that we are looking at checking with the recovery forces to see

what can be done at this point.

In his book Challenger, A True Story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space,

Adam pieces together stories from key officials, engineers, and the families of those killed in the explosion.

Today on the show, the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

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