EDITOR’S NOTE: Miles O’Brien is the science correspondent for PBS NewsHour and an aviation analyst for CNN. He was previously a staff correspondent and anchor with CNN, based in Atlanta and New York.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University. He is the author of “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great ...

The STS-107 crew (from left to right): David Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, William “Willie” McCool, and Ilan Ramon, the latter from the Israeli Space Agency. STS ...

On this day in history, Feb.1, 2003, as the Space Shuttle Columbia made its decent back to Earth after completing a 16-day mission in space, a real-life nightmare unfolded. The shuttle exploded and ...

(CNN) — Perhaps more than any other moment in NASA’s history, the Columbia shuttle disaster reshaped the US space agency’s approach to innovation, forever altering how it balanced risk with the call ...

When the Challenger space shuttle exploded a little over a minute after its launch in 1986, it pierced the dreams of millions about who watched the tragedy unfold live on television. It also ...

Promo art for CNN's "Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight". Since the tragic explosion of the space shuttle Challenger 73 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, resulting in the loss of all seven ...

On February 1, 2003, tragedy struck the space shuttle Columbia, as earlier damage to the craft's left wing caused the shuttle to be destroyed upon reentry, killing all seven astronauts on board. It ...

When the Challenger space shuttle exploded a little over a minute after its launch in 1986, it pierced the dreams of millions about who watched the tragedy unfold live on television. It also ...