Forty years after the Challenger disaster, NPR explores the engineers' last-minute efforts to stop the launch, their decades of guilt and the vital lessons that remain critical for NASA today.

Seven astronauts were killed in the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster. Because a teacher was aboard, millions of schoolchildren watched the event live in school. Forty years later, many of those ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, which occurred 73 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Kandice Seiberling and future NASA astronaut Judy Resnik were great childhood friends during the 1950s at Fairlawn Elementary ...

William R. Lucas, a NASA rocket scientist who helped shape the nation's first satellite as well as its first space station, and who later shouldered part of the blame for the 1986 explosion that ...

Forty years ago, the world watched in horror as NASA's space shuttle Challenger exploded mid-air, killing all seven crew members aboard. The disaster occurred at what was then the pinnacle of the U.S.

Forty years ago today, disaster struck NASA’s human spaceflight program when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after blastoff, killing all seven people onboard. The mission will be the ...

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia fell apart as it returned to Earth after spending more than two weeks in space. The accident instantly killed all seven astronauts on board. This was ...

Kandice Seiberling and future NASA astronaut Judy Resnik were great childhood friends during the 1950s at Fairlawn Elementary School in Akron, Ohio — they rode bikes and skated together, and ...