Feynman and the Challenger disaster

Forty years ago the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded shortly after lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing the crew on board. The tragic loss of life also brought a major setback for the NASA space programme.

InThe Challenger Disaster, a film made for TV by BBC Films, Science Channel and the Open University in 2013, William Hurt plays Richard Feynman, who is brought onto the Rogers Commission established to investigate the cause of the disaster. A brilliant physicist and populariser of science, Feynman worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos during the Second World War (something he later came to regret). He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics.

The investigation is difficult, partly because NASA officials are uncooperative. Feynman, demonstrating his ability to think through complex problems and thwart the bureaucratic obstacles put in his way, eventually makes the connection that everyone else had missed: cold weather on the day of the launch affected the performance of a component in one of the booster rockets, causing a fuel leakage resulting in the devastating explosion.

While conducting his investigation Feynman also has to come to terms with the news that he has cancer. He died two years later.