The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, .<br /><br />Space Shuttle The Final Mission BBC Documentary 2014 In the last month of the space shuttle programme, Kevin Fong is granted extraordinary access to the .<br /><br /><br /><br />On January 28, 1986 despite the warnings of engineers not to launch in freezing temperatures, NASA management chose to launch Space Shuttle Challenger.