TV review: NASA: Triumph and Tragedy

By Sian Brewis

It wasn’t seeing the rockets explode which was the most harrowing part of NASA: Triumph and Tragedy (BBC 2, 9pm).

It was a simple, haunting home movie of Christa McAuliffe at Cape Canaveral watching a shuttle blast off three months before she joined the ill-fated Challenger mission.

She looks like an excited child, not a 38-year-old soccer mom  – jumping around, squealing, cheering and clapping, clutching her friends with excitement.

You could get a palpable sense of the bright, bubbly woman who was clearly so thrilled about becoming the first teacher in space.

The Challenger disaster footage was still shocking, even when you know what happened next.

The screams of the crowd as the rocket exploded was contrasted with the silent disbelief and shock in the control room, where all you could hear was haunting, crackly static.

NASA had come up with the teacher in space programme because the novelty factor had worn off. “People were looking at shuttles as if they were an airliner,” said one astronaut.

“I  thought there would be escape routes or something,” says Cheryl McNaive, whose astronaut husband Ron also died.

Impressively, the programme featured an interview with ex-President George Bush, sent to the scene to comfort the families.

Astronaut Jim Lowell described being on Apollo 13 and watching frozen oxygen – their air supply – drifting past the window. “It looked like popcorn”.

Jonathan Clark, husband of astronaut Laurel, speaks movingly of watching the Columbia mission in 1993 – which orbited the Earth with a giant hole in its heat shield after a smash during takeoff.

Working for Nasa, he knew something was wrong but had no idea how serious it was.

Footage from  mission control shows the scientists puzzled as the crew reported problems.

Outside the window in the shuttle, there’s an ominous yellow glow as the it heats up before disaster struck.

Gripping and moving in equal measure, this fascinating documentary proved  space still has the power to hold an audience spellbound.

It’s shame Life (ITV4, 10pm) is being cancelled. It may be too quirky for its own good, but it’s still funny, smart and thoroughly watchable.

Det Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) always looked like he was having a good time, too. Last night, he and partner Dani (Sarah Shahi) were investigating a man found crushed in a car.

“What’s that?” she asks, peering into the wreckage. “A man.”

“What’s that stuff up there?” “That’s him, too.”

Not one of the best episodes, but worth it for Adam Arkin’s wry performance as the fresh-out-of-prison fraudster now running business classes – and finding his class googling him within seconds.