Original subtitles

Narrator: When they launch in 1981, the space shuttles take the world by storm.

Ken: And it was just one of the most spectacularly beautiful things I'd ever seen.

Narrator: But their fatal flaws are soon revealed.

Male: Rso reports vehicle exploded.

Narrator: Yet the shuttles will go on to be a part of some of the greatest scientific

Discoveries of our age.

Milt: I was looking at a huge amount of galaxies.

Narrator: The shuttles become symbols of peace.

Robert: I'm the person who ended the cold war.

Narrator: And at the end of their mission, the shuttles set the scene for the next chapter

In man's conquest of space.

Dick: That was one of the great days of our lives.

Male: And lift-off.

Lift-off for the 25th space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower.

Narrator: At the start of the 1980s, the space shuttles promise to be a new,

Safe and cost-effective way of getting into space.

But that dream dies on the 28th January 1986.

Just 73 seconds into its mission, the shuttle challenger blows up on live television.

Male: Flight fido: Rso reports vehicle exploded.

Narrator: The crew of seven, including a school teacher,

Perish as their families watch in horror.

Jeff: The challenger disaster was definitely a turning point,

Not just for the shuttle program but for nasa itself.

Narrator: Nasa's shuttle fleet is grounded.

Robert: Our world turned completely upside down in an instant.

Narrator: The challenger disaster shows that the shuttls are much harder to maintain

And more dangerous than nasa ever imagined.

Rowland: Having sewn the idea that the shuttle was something

That was going to deliver routine access to space,

In the most desperate, conspicuous way possible,

The shuttle had been proven not to be that machine.

Narrator: The future of nasa's shuttle fleet is in doubt.

But 5000 miles away, a shuttle is secretly being prepped for flight.

This one isn't american.

This is a russian shuttle.

They call it the "buran", which means blizzard.

At first glance, it looks almot identical to nasa's shuttles.

Jeff: The similarity was not coincidental for sure.

Tom: When I saw it, I said, they copied it.

The structure of details were exactly the same thing that the shuttle had.

Narrator: From the moment nasa started building their shuttle fleet in the early 1970s,

Soviet spies are sent to steal the plans.

Rowland: The russians were supporting a very extensive kgb exercise to get hold of

Technical material in order to build their own shuttles.

Narrator: Soviet leaders know from the beginning

The pentagon has a hand in the shuttle's design.

Jeff: The russian's clearly thought that the shuttle was giving us some sort of great

Military advantage.

Narrator: The soviets conclude the american shuttles have been built to attack them.

Rowland: The russians assumed that this was a machine that was going to be capable of dropping

A bomb on moscow, before soviet defenses had any chance to react.

Narrator: President reagan has no love for the soviet union.

President reagan: They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

Narrator: And he frightens the russians even more, with his plan to use nasa's shuttle flet

To build a missile defense shield in space.

Robert: For us to be able to pick off their weapons,

That sounded to me like a very good idea.

Narrator: Realizing, that if reagan's plans work, it will give the us an overwhelming

Strategic advantage, the soviets have to act.

On the 15th November 1988, the russians launch one of their own shuttles into orbit

For the first time.

And the americans are stunned o see, it's better than theirs.

Milt: One thing that really impressed me, the fact it was unmanned.

That was really significant.

Narrator: Not only can buran be flown remotely,

It can carry more than its american counterparts.

Robert: Their orbiter didn't carry the main engines to orbit.

They threw them away with the booster vehicle.

Wayne: We looked at some of the things that they did and we thought,

Wow that was pretty smart, maybe we should have designed a vehicle like they did.

Narrator: But the cost of matching nasa's fleet with five shuttles of their own

Sets the soviets back $30 billion.

Jeff: They discovered something that we had discovered, and that was that it's pretty expensive

To operate.

Narrator: And it isn't just the shuttles the russians are trying to keep up with.

There are new american war planes, ships and submarines as well.

Robert: We just ran them out of money.

Our technology, our capabilities, they just couldn't keep up with us.

Narrator: The russians face financial ruin.

Within a year of the buran's flight, the berlin wall comes down and the soviet union stars

To collapse.

After flying a buran just once, the fleet is abandoned.

The russians are forced to go back to using conventional rockets.

Rowland: They poured what money they had, and it was scarce, into trying to build and support

The mir space station.

Narrator: The focus now for the russians is using their mir space station to master

Long term space flight.

To keep their shuttle program alive, nasa has to come up with a new purpose for them.

After the challenger disaster, the shuttles are believed to be to risky to carry out

Any mission that can be done using conventional rockets.

Wayne: All this talk of flying, all the commercial satellites, all the military satellites,

That all went away.

And so to justify our continued existence we had to launch a lot more scientific satellites and

Do more scientific missions.

Narrator: Nasa knows the shuttles have to deliver a big scientific breakthrough.

And they hope launching this the largest and most powerful space telescope

Ever built, will do it.

Male: Three, two, one, and lift-off of the space shuttle discovery with the hubble space

Telescope, our window on the universe.

Jeff: People were really excited about the idea that this was going to be this incredible

New instrument that would be able to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Rowland: Nasa depended on capturing the public's imagination for funding.

They desperately needed it to be a success.

Commander: Max. Astronaut: Go.

Commander: Ers. Astronaut: Go flight.

Commander: Eva. Astronaut: We're go.

Commander: This is mission control, houston.

Commander: Discovery, go for hubble release.

Narrator: Flying 380 miles aboe the earth, higher than any shuttle has ever flown before,

Discovery flawlessly deploys the giant telescope.

Commander: Thank you for a good day.

Narrator: Three weeks later hubble beams back its first images of distance stars.

Jeff: It's one of these situations where I see it but I can't believe my eyes.

The images were blurry.

You know, this is a billion and a half dollar telescope and it can't focus straight.

Narrator: Hubble's optics are the wrong shape,

Which effectively leaves the telescope near-sighted.

Milt: Really embarrassing, obviously to the agency, to the nation, you know,

To all the people who were involved with it.

Jeff: It was a disaster.

Narrator: Nasa's reputation is once again in tatters.

Dick: It became a touchstone for everything wrong with nasa.

Rowland: It's hard to imagine anything more humiliating.

It was a really stupid error, uh, it was something which they could and should have checked.

Narrator: American politicians are furious.

Milt: The senate committee told us, nasa if you are not able to do what you say you can do

To repair hubble and get it back in good condition,

There's a good possibility that funding will be cut.

Narrator: But nasa realizes there is much more to do

Than just correcting hubble's faulty lens.

A host of other components will also need replacing.

Repairing the telescope will be the most complex mission nasa has ever attempted.

Jeff: This mission was going to require five space walks of a degree of complexity far greater

Than anything that nasa had ever done before.

-And could you roll a little be more up right, please...

Narrator: For the next 11 months, the astronauts plan and practice the dozens of intricae

Procedures they'll perform on the telescope in space.

Male: Continue to come forward.

Jeff: We spent about 400 hours underwater, a tremendous amount of training.

Narrator: The repairs are so complicated, the fear is the astronauts will run out of powr

And oxygen before they can all be completed.

To help them train, nasa makes a giant inflatable telescope

Complete with an inflatable astronaut.

Every aspect of the mission is carefully timed to ensure

It can be done before the astronaut's supplies are exhausted.

Male: It's faster than the last time.

Milt: We spent an awful lot of time talking about what if, what if this happens,

What if that happens.

I knew we had to be ready for anything.

Narrator: Finally, on December 2nd 1993, three years after hubble launched,

The astronauts are ready for their 11 day mission to repair it.

Before they leave, the head of nasa gives them a stark warnin.

Jeff: He looked at us and he said, I hope that you realise that the future of nasa's

Human space flight depends on the success of your mission.

Like, thank you sir, like we didn't know this.

Narrator: At 4:27am, the shuttle endeavour blasts off.

Male: Lift-off of the space shuttle endeavour to service the hubble space telescope.

Narrator: Endeavour races to rendezvous with the telescope orbiting 380 miles

Above the earth.

Dick: My big role was gonna be to get us in the right position

To be able to capture the telescope.

Narrator: Travelling at 17,500mph, the shuttle joins hubble in orbit.

Commander dick covey has to fly close enough to grab the telescope with the shuttle's robotic arm.

Dick: When you get close to the telescope, it's intense, you're making very precise maneuvers.

Narrator: One wrong move will send the telescope spiraling out of orbit and destroy it.

Dick: Looking through the top windows of the orbiter until it gets to a point

Where it transitions low enough to the telescope for a robotic arm to grab it.

(music)

(music)

Houston, endeavour has a firm handshake with mr. Hubble's telescope.

Female: We copy that covey, there are smiles galore down here.

Great work up there you guys.

Dick: And we were very, very happy when we finally got the telescope captured.

Now we had five days of space walks that the whole crew was going to start focusing on.

Male: Mission specialists story musgrave and jeff hoffman

Go through the first steps of getting ready for their spacewalk.

Narrator: The first task for te astronauts is to replace some f hubble's delicate instruments,

Housed deep inside the telescope.

Jeff: We had to open these big doors and I basically pushed story underneath and I would

Undo the bolts and he would pull out the unit, hand me the old one, I'd hand him the new one.

Narrator: With limited oxygen and power supplies,

Mission control focuses on sticking to the timetable.

Milt: I'll never forget that first spacewalk.

I was determined to stay on a timeline, do what we needed to do.

Narrator: After almost eight hours the astronauts manage to replace all the faulty instruments.

Jeff: And it worked perfectly, just the way it had done, so we,

We were really feeling pretty good.

Narrator: All that's left is for hoffman to close the telescope doors.

I won't use all the words which went through my mind because we're on television here,

But you know, this is the most complicated mission that nasa has ever undertaken

And I can't get the doors closed.

I mean, what is going on?

Narrator: If hubble's doors remain open,

The sensitive electronics inside will be destroyed

By the extreme conditions of space.

Despite 11 months of preparation, nasa engineers didn't plan for this.

Jeff: They kept sending us suggestions from the ground,

We were describing the problem but it was clear that they didn't quite get it

Because none of the things that they suggested worked.

Narrator: Engineers on the ground are out of ideas.

Everything hinges on the astronauts finding a solution.

Milt: Well story came up with the idea to take a strap to be able to act as another hand,

To put it into place where it could part of the doors together

While they worked on the other areas to get it to latch.

Narrator: But the concern is, f the strap is pulled too tight,

The delicate telescope could be irreparably damaged.

Jeff: The people who were in charge of hubble were worried because this thing can exert

Up to 2000 pounds of force and I think they had these visions of the hubble collapsing

Like an aluminium beer can.

Narrator: With oxygen supplies running out, mission control has no choice,

They have to let the astronauts try and use the strap to force the doors shut.

Milt: As the flight director, I made a decision to tell story, go do it.

Narrator: Finally, hubble's doors are firmly shut.

The first marathon eight hour spacewalk is a success.

Jeff: Good work guys.

Milt: And that was a huge amount of relief in the control center cause we got back on track.

Narrator: Over the next four days, the team completes a record-breaking

35 and a half hours of space walks.

Narrator: And they manage to finish all the repairs to the telescope with just a few hours

Of oxygen and power to spare.

Narrator: But it will be anothr 6 weeks before the astronauts know if their mission

Has been a success.

Nasa releases the new data from hubble.

Ken: I remember just being desperate to see what it was going to look like.

Narrator: When the images emerge, they are extraordinary.

Milt: I'm not an astronomer, but I said, wow man we have fixed this thing.

Narrator: Hubble's spectacular pictures transform our understanding of the universe.

Milt: I was looking at a huge amount of galaxies in that one picture, crystal clear.

I mean, you could see the shapes and you could tell that they were galaxies.

Jeff: They looked like the creations of some psychedelic artists.

Dick: That was one of the great days of our lives.

Narrator: The most complex shuttle mission ever attempted has been a success.

Nasa's reputation is salvaged.

But sending a shuttle to repair the $1.5 billion telescope cost nasa another billion dollars.

The shuttle's future is far from secure.

1994 the us has a new president and a new threat to the progra.

President clinton is concerned about the shuttles' spiraling costs.

Wayne: The clinton administration told us that they considered the space shuttle

Program very expensive and it nearly got cancelled.

Narrator: The shuttles' salvation comes from an unlikely place.

Russia.

Since the fall of the soviet union, the russians have been struggling to keep mir,

Their prized space station in orbit.

Rowland: The russian space program was on its knees, absolutely starved of funds,

And in danger of collapsing completely.

Narrator: President clinton is warned, if the russian space program ends,

It can have grave security implications for the us.

Wayne: There was a lot of concern that the russian rocket scientists were going to start

Building missiles for rogue states.

Jeff: There was this feeling that it would be in the interest of the united states to engage

The soviet space program personnel, and what better way to do that than

By a joint project?

Narrator: The us offers russia a deal.

The shuttles will fly regular supply missions to keep mir going.

In return, the russians have to let us astronauts on-board their space station,

To carry out experiments.

Rowland: No country on earth had greater experience of long duration space flight

Than the russians, and america wanted a piece of that as it looked ahead to building

Its own space station.

Narrator: The russians agree to the american proposal and in an historic move,

Nasa sends a team of astronauts to star city, just outside moscow, for training.

Britain's only shuttle astronaut, michael foale is one of them.

Michael: A lot of military american astronauts felt this was (bleep).

This was not something we should be doing,

And when I met russian instructors,

They were disgusted with their government.

They did not want to give us their crown jewels, they did not want to tell us

How their spaceship was built.

Narrator: But the russian and american governments are determined to have

Their astronauts work together.

Former us navy fighter pilot robert "hoot" gibson, is in charge of picking the crew

For the first shuttle mission to mir.

Robert: The press kept asking me, are you going to assign yourself to the mir docking?

And I said, absolutely not.

I had trained to shoot down russian migs and had been a participant in this cold war.

Narrator: But nasa has other ideas.

On June 27th, 1995, hoot finds himself in the driver's seat, in the first shuttle

Scheduled to dock with the russian space station.

220 miles above the earth, hoot guides the shuttle atlantis towards mir.

Hoot: It was the most complex, it was the most demanding mission that I ever got to fly.

Narrator: A special adaptor has been fitted to the shuttle,

To allow it to dock with the russian space station.

At 9am eastern daylight time, the two spacecraft connect.

Robert: It just went off like clockwork.

Everything worked perfectly. Everything went just fine.

Narrator: It's the first time a shuttle has ever docked with another spacecraft

And when hoot opens the hatch, he makes history.

Hoot: Valdimir dezhurov, the mir commander, one of those russian fighter pilots that I had been

Training to shoot down all those years, and now the two of us cold war warriors,

Shook hands...

And the president of the united states that day said,

This handshake means the cold war is over.

So I'm fond of telling people that hey, I'm the person who ended the cold war.

A new era of international cooperation in space.

Nasa plans to send a shuttle to mir every four months.

But a series of accidents on-board the russian space station fill the nasa astronauts with dread.

Michael: I was worried. They had had a fire on-board the mir,

A very bad fire, it almost caused them to abandon the mir station.

Narrator: Determined to use mir to help them understand the effects of spending long perios

In space, nasa pushes ahead.

Three months after the fire, michael foale will serve his stint on the space station.

Michael: Looking at the mir as we approached it, I was just thinking,

I've got to steel myself to do the hardest thing I've ever done in my life,

Get through four months on the mir station.

Narrator: Life on mir is a million miles away

From the highly organized world of the shuttles.

Michael: You're in a tunnel complex.

You're like a mole.

And ah, because the mir had been there for 13 years at that point,

They'd never really thrown stuff away.

It was extraordinary.

Narrator: Michael's job on-board is to conduct experiments for nasa.

A month into his stay, his worst fears come true when mir collides with an unmanned

Russian supply module.

Michael: We'd had a space collision, a lot of loss of power, a de-pressurization.

Basically, the situation had changed dramatically from one that we'd expected to surviving.

Narrator: As the russian cosmonauts assess the damage,

Michael is stuck on the ailing space station until the next shuttle arrives.

Michael: When finally the space shuttle approaches, I'm just thinking, that is so beautiful.

The shuttle is a gorgeous looking vehicle in space and as you see it coming up

To save you, (laughs) all of that emotion kind of washes over you

And I had tears in my eyes as it, it came up closer and closer.

And of course I'm as excited as can be to see my new crew-mates who are going to take me home.

Narrator: Serviced by the shuttles, mir is repaired and survives until 2001

When it is finally taken out of orbit and sent crashing into the pacific ocean.

For nasa, the russian space station has served its purpose.

Rowland: Mir provided a stepping stone towards nasa's true ambition.

They built the space shuttle with the hope that one day they might build a space station.

Narrator: At the start of the new millennium, nasa preps the shuttle fleet

To begin construction on a 450-ton space station.

Barbara: It was a huge and really, really important endeavour.

Narrator: Working 200 miles above the earth, the shuttles are going to build

The most expensive machine ever created.

Rowland: Nasa had always had ambitions to build a space station and the shuttle

Was the vehicle through which that could be made possible.

Narrator: When completed, the space station will be enormous.

For nasa, the shuttle fleet will finally be doing what it has been designed for.

Male: A shuttle to carry men and equipment to orbiting space stations is one of nasa's goals for this decade.

Narrator: Since the early 1970s, nasa's dream has been to use the shuttles

And a space station for an even more ambitious project.

Wayne: The shuttles' role in exploration would be as a ferry to the space station

Where the great explorers would take off to the moon and mars

And other destinations in the solar system eventually.

Narrator: But as the costs soa, nasa is forced to concede

It can't afford to build a space station of its own.

Rowland: They realized that a better way of making this program real,

Was to make it international, and so the international space station program was born.

Narrator: Otherwise known as the iss, america joins 14 other countries, including russia,

Japan and britain, to share the cost of the $150 billion project.

Over the course of the next decade, the space station will be built in sections

And carried into orbit piece by piece by the shuttles .

Michael: One of the wonders is that you can get 16 different countries with its own engineers

Working in those countries, designing really complicated space equipment

That comes together only once, and that's in space.

Narrator: Starting in December 2000, the first shuttles head into orbit to begin assembling

The huge structure.

Michael: The space shuttle carries a robotic arm and that was essential for delivering

These modules that are part of the international space station core systems.

And so we would never have the international space station today with the space shuttle.

Narrator: Over the next 16 shuttle missions, the space station starts to take shape.

Barbara: It's kind of like a lego game, you put the first piece up and you keep adding on.

Narrator: By 2003, the permanently manned space station is half built.

To complete construction, nasa schedules an additional 30 shuttle flights.

On January 16th, 2003, the space shuttle columbia prepares to blast off

On a rare science-only mission that will not dock with the is.

Led by commander rick husband, the crew will spend 16 days in orbit.

For four of them, this will be their first time in space.

Three, two, one.

We have booster ignition and lift-off on space shuttle columbia with a multitude

Of national and international space research experiments.

Narrator: The launch appears to go perfectly.

But the next day, a standard review of the launch footage shows something alarming.

Wayne: There was video evidence of a debris strike on the wing,

And some of the engineers had been off looking at the video,

Which was not very good, and are trying to draw some conclusions.

Narrator: The video shows a piece of lightweight foam insulation breaking away

From the shuttle's fuel tank.

The concern is it could have hit the shuttle's vital heat proof tiles.

Tom: A tile is not designed to be impacted by anything.

Not water, not debris, not a bird, not anything that's in the atmosphere.

Narrator: During re-entry, the underside of the shuttle is exposed to temperatures

Twice as hot as lava.

If the foam has damaged a tile, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Tom: We knew that if we would lose a tile there, we could lose the entire vehicle.

I mean it was just that straightforward.

Narrator: The columbia crew, unaware of what has happened, continues with their mission.

Onboard the partially completed international space station is us astronaut ken bowersox.

He can't see the shuttle but he can talk to the crew.

Ken: It was almost like being home, to hear their voices, to hear what they were doing.

We started off talking about our different missions and it sounded like typical nasa speak.

Rick: Everybody's been busy with all kinds of different experiments,

I'll let kc kind of tell you some of the things

She's been doing with the combustion module real quick.

Ken: One of the crew members, laurel clark, came up and said, hey enough of that,

Let's talk about our families. How are your families doing?

And switched the whole tone of the conversation and it was really sweet.

Laurel: Don, I was kind of wondering how your twins are doing, how's that going?

Don: They seem to remember me. They, they know who I am and...

Narrator: But as columbia's mission progresses,

Ken starts to sense mission control is worried about the shuttle.

Ken: We sort of felt that the gaze of houston had moved from us over to sts-107,

And we just noticed a little less intensity on the part of the ground controllers.

Narrator: Back on the ground, nasa has been carefully analyzing footage of the foam strike.

Wayne: Engineers felt it was a glancing blow and they had some mathematics that said

It probably was not critical.

Narrator: This isn't the first time this has happened.

Rowland: Foam falling off the tank occurred on kind of almost every flight,

It was so common that people barely remarked on it at all.

Narrator: Nasa concludes it's unlikely the foam caused any serious damage to the shuttle

And columbia is cleared for re-entry.

Male: Columbia, houston, good burn, no trim required.

Narrator: After a successful 16 day mission,

The crew prepares for what should be a routine landing.

Male: The guidance officer confirming that columbia's right on track towards landing

At the kennedy space center at 8:16 am central.

Narrator: At first, all seems fine.

But 10 minutes into re-entry, nasa ground controllers notice the temperature sensors

In the shuttle's left wing have failed.

Male: Flight max...

Fyi I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle,

Hydraulic return temperatures, and there is no commonality.

Male: No commonality. Copy. -Thank you.

Narrator: Instrument malfunction is not unusual.

Mission control isn't concerned until suddenly...

Female: In-flight e-comm. Male: E-comm.

Female: I've got four temperature sensors on the bottom line data that are all off scale.

Narrator: More sensors start failing all over the shuttle.

Male: And columbia, houston, we see your tyre pressure messages and we did not copy your last

Male: This is instrumentation narrator: Then shuttle commandr

Rick husband abruptly cuts off in mid-sentence.

Rick: ...Roger...

Male: Flight controllers are continuing to stand by

To regain communications with the spacecraft.

Male: Columbia, houston, uhf comm check.

Milt: The body language that we could see down there and some of the voices we were hearing

In the communication, something wasn't right.

You could tell.

Male: Flight, I'd like to state where we're at.

We did go a little erratic for a little bit before they went away,

So I do believe it's instrumentation.

Male: Okay.

Male: Columbia, houston, uhf comm check.

Male: Fido, when do you expect tracking?

Male: One minute ago, flight.

Narrator: 10 minutes before the scheduled touchdown, there is still no sign of columbia.

Male: Okay.

Tom: When you can't communicate with a vehicle and it's not there, then it's, it's gone.

Narrator: Then television news coverage shows what appears

To be columbia breaking apart in a shower of flames.

Male: Tc, flight. Tc, flight.

Flight, tc...Lock the doors. Copy.

Milt: John walked behind me and I said, I said john, what's happened,

And I'll never forget this, he said, we lost them.

President bush: My fellow americans, at nine o'clock this morning,

Mission control in houston lost contact with their space shuttle columbia.

A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above texas.

The columbia's lost.

There are no survivors.

Narrator: What is left of the shuttle columbia is taken back to nasa for analysis.

Ken: I remember going to visit the columbia debris and when I saw it for the first time,

The thing that made the biggest impression on me was the window frames,

And thinking that I had sat behind those window frames on columbia on an entry

And just seeing the melted edges of the metal frame, I mean I can still see that image.

Narrator: Investigators are brought in to find out why columbia burned up on re-entry.

Evidence points to a hole in the shuttle's thermal protection system as the cause.

All attention turns back to the video of the launch.

Dick: The investigation board determined we're zeroing in

On the lightweight foam insulation on the external tank.

Narrator: Enhancing the launch footage reveals the foam insulation from the fuel tank

Didn't strike the fragile part of the shuttle's wing at all.

It hit the wing's leading edge, which is made from a super strong,

High-tech material called carbon-carbon.

Tom: So a piece of foam hits the leading edge, how could that cause something to fail

That's probably as strong as steel?

Narrator: To nasa, it seems impossible that a lightweight piece of foam could have

Penetrated one of the toughest parts of the shuttle.

Investigator: Right now, it just does not make sense to us that a piece of debris

Would be the root cause for the loss of columbia and its crew.

There's got to be another reason.

Narrator: But accident investigators aren't convinced.

They force nasa to test the leading edge of the wing by smashing blocks of foam into I.

Dick: They actually fired it from a canon at pieces of the leading edge

To see what would happen.

Narrator: They discover a piece of lightweight foam fired at a speed of 500 miles per hur

Easily punches a hole in the wing.

Dick: Instead of this being a sponge hitting a leading edge, it was a brick.

That was it. Everybody knew it then. There was no other question about it.

Narrator: Nasa is forced to admit they had been wrong all along.

Investigator: In four simple words, the foam did it.

It ultimately led to the destruction of the orbiter and the loss of crew.

Narrator: For the second time in the shuttle's history, a crew didn't make it back alive.

The loss of another seven astronauts underlines

How dangerously fragile and had to maintain the shuttles are.

Nasa is forced to consider grounding its three remaining shuttles...

Permanently.

Wayne: The columbia accident happened and there was talk of not flying the shuttle again

But in an historical sense, you know, any, any great

Endeavour like this has come with casualties.

You don't want to see people, you know, die, but if we're gonna do some great things,

We're gonna take some risks.

Narrator: Nasa decides, despite the inherent danger, there is one project the shuttles

Should complete before they are retired.

The international space statio.

Orbiting 250 miles above the earth, the iss is only half built.

The remaining sections of the multi billion dollar project are still on the ground.

The only way to get them into orbit is on the shuttles.

Wayne: There was no other vehicle available in the world that could carry those

Large pieces into space.

We would have had to trash those and build a completely different set of space station hardware

That would have taken many, many, many more years.

Narrator: In July 2005, nasa prepares the shuttle fleet for flight.

They estimate it will take another five years and 21 shuttle missions

To finish assembling the giant space station

Among the astronauts getting ready to go is barbara morgan

21 years earlier, in a blaze of publicity, barbara was selected

As the back-up for school teacher christa mcauliffe,

Who was to be nasa's first ordinary citizen in space.

Christa: When that shuttle goes, there might be one body, but there's gonna be 10 souls

That I'm taking with me. Thank you.

Narrator: After months of training together, in 1986, barbara watched christa

And the rest of her crew perish as challenger exploded.

Barbara: Nasa asked if I would continue on in christa's shoes,

When the shuttles were ready to fly safely again and nasa was ready,

That I would fly on a shuttle mission.

Narrator: Quitting her teaching job, barbara becomes a professional astronaut.

Barbara: So even though the going on was difficult...

Male: And lift-off.

Barbara: I felt it was just really, really important that we,

That we keep exploration open.

Narrator: Now barbara finds herself working on the most ambitious building project

Ever attempted in space.

Barbara: So we were a construction crew,

We got to help build the international space station.

You now, it's not fun and games, it's fun and really, really hard work.

Narrator: Over the coming years, thanks to the shuttles, the iss doubles in size.

Barbara: If we were to bring it back down to earth

And lay it out on a standard football field,

It would slightly spill out over the edges.

Narrator: By the end of the decade, the international space station is almost complete.

Male: The final lift-off on atlantis.

Narrator: July 15th, 2011.

The space shuttle atlantis blasts off and heads to the iss for its final mission.

Dick: I made sure that I was there to watch atlantis on that last flight.

Robert: It was a very much bittersweet day.

I think everyone had tears in their eyes. I did.

Narrator: 30 years earlier the shuttles were symbolic of the cold war.

Now they are ending their days as great symbols of global cooperation.

Wayne: I think people look at it as a technological thing

When it's really a sociological triumph.

Narrator: Since the first crew arrived at the turn of the millennium,

Over 200 astronauts from 18 different nations have served on-board the iss.

Milt: I think it is a zero-gravity united nations

And it works a hell of a lot better than the one in new york city.

Narrator: After clocking more than half a billion miles in orbit,

The era of the space shuttle is over.

Male: A ship like no other, its place in history secured,

The space shuttle pulls into port for the last time.

Narrator: Although they were never as cheap or as safe as nasa had hoped, in the end

The space shuttles prove to be a giant leap towards a much bigger goal.

Barbara: Now we have new generations working on

Reusable spacecraft that will get us much further.

Ken: What we were doing was laying one of the bricks

For the road that was going to lead humanity out into our solar system.

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