Challenger: The Final Flight (2020) Science Documentary (3 x episodes)

A 4-part 2020 docuseries created by Steven Leckart and Glen Zipper and directed by Daniel Junge and Steven Leckart. The docuseries revolves around the tragic 1986 incident involving NASA's Space Shuttle Challenger including events that preceded launch and aftermath of the disaster.

The miniseries includes interviews with key people involved, Christa McAuliffe's preparation for the flight, problems with the solid rocket boosters, a teleconference between NASA and Morton Thiokol the night before launch, accounts from the astronauts' families, and the investigation into the catastrophe. At the same time, archive footage delves into the Space Shuttle program. The series was released on September 16, 2020, on Netflix.

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard, including school teacher Christa McAuliffe. The tragedy shook the United States and grounded the Space Shuttle program for nearly three years.

The official trailer was released on September 2, 2020.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the miniseries holds an approval rating of 84% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Challenger: The Final Flight doesn't uncover any new information, but intimate interviews elevate its well-crafted, heart-breaking retelling of an avoidable national tragedy." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the series a score of 76 out of 100, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Release date: September 16, 2020 (USA)

End year: 2020

Content rating: TV-14

Written by: Steven Leckart · Glen Zipper

Produced by: Daniel Junge · Steven Leckart

Production companies: Bad Robot · Zipper Bros Films · Sutter Road Picture Company

Keywords: Nasa, Tragedy, Miniseries, Space Shuttle, Challenger Tragedy, 1980s

Genres: Science & Nature TV, Historical Documentaries, Science & Nature Documentaries, Docuseries, US TV Programmes

This programme is: Provocative, Investigative

"A Reminder for the Next Generation"

"Many born in the 90's have no recollection of a time when space exploration failed. This documentary looks at the successes of NASA in terms of inclusion during the 1970's and 80's. Then looked at how NASA got greedy and tried to do too many things at once, 7 great people were sacrificed in this greediness in January of 1986."

S01-E01 - Space for Everyone

September 16, 2020 Netflix - 44m

President Richard Nixon authorizes the development of the Space Shuttle, a reusable spacecraft that will transform the space frontier. NASA introduces 35 persons chosen after a positive campaign encouraging women and minorities to become astronauts. Thousands witness Columbia's historic launch in April 1981, the first American spaceflight in six years. Despite the tremendous risks, NASA management conveys the Shuttle is a safe vehicle that flies like a commercial aircraft.

S01-E02 - HELP!

September 16, 2020 Netflix- 42m

Christa McAuliffe is named the winner of the Teacher in Space Project following a nationwide search conducted by NASA under the direction of President Ronald Reagan. Engineers at Morton Thiokol start seeing erosion inside the solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and part of an O-ring burned off. It is a significant concern, and when the problem persists, the engineers feel it is not being dealt with. But Lawrence Mulloy issues a waiver so they can continue to fly. Under the pressure of a demanding schedule and to preserve its budget, nobody is willing to ground the fleet.

S01-E03 - A Major Malfunction

September 16, 2020 Netflix - 41m

NASA has a program assessment review with representatives from all subcontractors to discuss what below-freezing temperatures the night before launch will mean. The people most knowledgeable about the O-ring issue make a presentation during a teleconference with NASA, recommending not launching and not doing so below 53 °F. Mulloy is angry at what he considers an "irrational decision", making an intimidating comment which manipulates Thiokol into changing their minds. The cold overnight temperatures, mixed with engineers at Kennedy Space Center turning on the spigots, sees icicles form on the service structure. After a two-hour delay, during which the shuttle stack is inspected, Challenger is finally cleared for launch.

S01-E04 - Nothing Ends Here

September 16, 2020 Netflix - 53m

In the wake of the Challenger disaster, Reagan speaks to the nation about the tragedy from the Oval Office, before the formation of an investigation board. Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Richard Feynman plays a crucial role in the inquest, demonstrating that O-rings lack resilience at 32 degrees. The Rogers Commission returns its verdict of a "fatally flawed" decision process, stating a faulty rubber seal on an SRB and an attitude of NASA are just as to blame. NASA goes flying again after a 32-month hiatus. America's return to space is confirmed when mission control instructs Discovery's commander to "go at throttle up", and the redesigned SRBs successfully separate from the external tank a few moments later.

By James Grebey - Sep 16, 2020 - SYFY

f you were alive in 1986, you remember it. Even if you were born years or decades later, chances are you know the image — a devastating explosion set against a clear, unusually cold Florida sky, with a thick white cloud that forks in two as rockets and debris fall from what was once the Space Shuttle Challenger. The moment is infamous, but Netflix’s new four-part documentary series Challenger: The Final Flight, goes behind the disaster that killed all seven astronauts aboard, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

It’s about the simmering failings of the Space Shuttle program and the bureaucracy and momentum that made such a catastrophe inevitable. It is also, fascinatingly, a documentary about guilt — and in a quietly perverse way, the limitations of guilt when faced with that same tragic momentum.

The Final Flight begins with the Jan. 28, 1986 launch, cutting to the opening credits just after the explosion, but then it goes back in time to the conception of the Space Shuttle, which was conceived of as a means to make travel to space safe, easy, and borderline routine. Space would be for everyone, the Shuttle promised, but it soon became apparent that wasn’t the case.

The Shuttle was plagued by problems, some of which were dangerous, while others were lesser delays that still poked a hole in the vision NASA was selling. This branding issue, the documentary explains with incredible archival footage and interviews with key figures from NASA and space engineering history, is what led to McAuliffe’s presence on Challenger, which was set to blast off into space with two rockets that had a clearly documented, potentially fatal flaw. The show had to go on.

Challenger exploded due to an engineering flaw in the O-rings that were meant to prevent the burning, pressurized gas within the two rockets from bursting through, but the documentary series humanizes this mechanical flaw and its very human cost. Interviews with the deceased astronauts’ loved ones — especially those with June Scobee Rogers, the widow of Challenger's commander Richard “Dick” Scobee — put the loss of the crew in devastating, emotional terms.

Peter Billingsly, a former child actor best known for A Christmas Story (and more recently a surprising turn in Spider-Man: Far From Home) was NASA’s “kid liaison” for the mission. He was 14 years old when he watched the Challenger explode, and given that there was talk of one day sending the first kid into space, Billingsly almost seems to have some survivor’s guilt.

Survivor's guilt is a common theme among many of the documentary’s subjects, but it’s in conversations with the NASA executives who OK'ed the launch and the engineers who helped build the flawed rockets that The Final Flight really shows the cost of guilt. From the moment we first see Brian Russell, an engineer for contractor Morton Thiokol’s solid rocket booster program, you can tell this is a haunted man, even today. Russell wasn’t in a high enough position to call any shots, but he still kicks himself for not breaking protocol, for not doing more to raise red flags.

The documentary is so drenched in guilt that the few subjects who are unrepentant seem downright ghoulish. William R. Lucas, the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center at the time of the Challenger disaster, states that he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. To him, it’s the price of progress, and it’s jaw-dropping when he compares the deaths of the Challenger crew to his “forebearers” who didn’t all survive when they “came across the Appalachian mountains in a wagon with horses.”

Lawrence Mulloy, project director for the Marshall Space Flight Center and the man arguably the most directly responsible for pressuring engineers at Morton Thiokol to approve of a risky cold-weather launch despite their concerns about the O-rings, seems to carry an immense weight of guilt. He’s The Final Flight’s clearest “villain,” though he appears so defeated by history that it’s hard to feel animosity toward him as a viewer. “I feel I was to blame,” Mulloy says in the final episode. “But, I felt no guilt.”

Mulloy’s last sentence is jarring. It’s unclear from the documentary if he means that he still feels no guilt, or if that was just his feeling at the time. If it’s the former, then you get the sense that he may be lying to himself. His handling of guilt — or lack thereof — is indicative of a larger theme. Regret can only go so far before self-preservation and routine kick back in.

The Final Flight is informative and profoundly moving, but it becomes revelatory at the very end of the final episode, in a way that’s perhaps even more subversive than the documentary itself is willing to admit. Episode 4 focuses on the aftermath of the disaster, including the Rogers Commission that was tasked with identifying the cause of the explosion.

Then, at the end, the music starts to swell again. Nearly three years after the disaster, NASA launched the Shuttle Discovery, the first since Challenger’s destruction. The problems had been solved, and America was back in space. It’s framed as a triumphant moment, and indeed some of the NASA and engineering talking heads who were guilt-struck and grieving earlier in the documentary seem to view it as an uplifting continuation of America’s space story.

But, just before the credits roll, a few slides of text tell of what would happen next. NASA flew 86 more successful Shuttle missions over the next 15 years until Columbia broke apart on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003. “An investigation revealed a similar failure to fix a well-documented issue,” the text flatly explains. That’s it in a sentence, but the story of the Columbia disaster could (and should) fill out its own four-episode documentary series. Instead, The Final Flight tacks it on as a necessary, deliberately un-elaborated epilogue.

The implication, intentional or not, is that it doesn’t matter how guilt-struck these people feel because the narrative of progress — and the momentum that goes along with it — will push events toward a seemingly inevitable future. The destruction of the Challenger weighs heavily on almost all of the subjects in the documentary, but the ending reveals that they, for the most part, can’t help but put their grief and their guilt inside an optimistic, forward-looking story about how the world works.

The Final Flight itself does this, laying out a four-hour case of the deep, inherently flawed way NASA worked before then ending with hopeful fanfare over the next successful Shuttle launch. We all need a happy ending, even if the story isn’t happy or, in fact, over. The deliberately brief mention of Columbia’s demise is a tacit admission that Challenger’s story didn’t end on Jan. 28, 1986, the date of the disaster, or on Sept. 29, 1988, when Discovery saw America return to space. The drive to always push forward, and the complacency that can come with that, will always shape the way we do and view things. And, sometimes, lead to another tragedy.