Adam Higginbotham’s admirably researched story of the Challenger space shuttle disaster

Non-fiction

Space Shuttle Challenger crew members gather for an official portrait on November 11, 1985. Photo: NASA/Getty

Pat Carty

For a generation, the 1986 Challenger Shuttle disaster is seared into the memory much as the 9/11 attacks would be for those born later. Similarly, it was a catastrophe that many of us watched unfold on our television screens. Adam Higginbotham calls it a “bereavement unlike any event since the assassination of John Kennedy more than 20 years before”.

Higginbotham is the author of 2019’s award-winning Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster and has performed a similarly admirable feat of research here, interviewing, and humanising the vast cast of characters involved and shining an investigative light into every corner.