by Michael DiMario

Title: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Authors: Adam Higginbotham

Publisher: Avid Reader Press, New York, NY

Publication Date: 2024

Total Pages: 576

The space shuttle Challenger, on January 28, 1986, broke apart seventy-three seconds after liftoff killing all seven astronauts on board including the New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe. The author, Adam Higginbotham, narrates the complete story behind this tragedy through thorough archival research and interviews. There are many books on the Challenger tragedy but this author takes this tragic story to a whole new level of detailed depth and examination. The read is very dynamic and fast paced revealing new facts and details not examined holistically before of Challenger leading up to its fateful flight, the investigation, and recovery operations. Details of the Challenger’s two minutes and forty-five second free fall into the Atlantic Ocean are discussed as well as the assumed attempt by astronaut pilot Michael Smith to continue to fly the shuttle.

The author discusses the NASA and contractor cultures of the early space program through Apollo and the space shuttle and its contribution to saving astronaut lives and assets as well as the contribution to its tragedies. There are NASA and contractor heroes. An example of a NASA hero is systems engineer Jenny Howard, one of the very few female flight controllers, is credited with saving the Challenger from total destruction during a launch sequence in 1985.

The author begins by narrating the tragedy of the Apollo 1 fire killing Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee on January 27, 1967 due to a spark in an oxygen rich capsule. The author discusses how the early Apollo astronauts lobbied NASA to redesign Apollo’s environmental control system and its gas mixtures and the reasoning to maintain the early Apollo environment design as well as its hatch that prevented first responders from saving the doomed astronauts. The book ends discussing the tragedy of the space shuttle Columbia February 1, 2003 killing all seven astronauts on board. Were lessons learned from previous NASA tragedies and loss of life?