Information about Christa Mcauliffe

Christa McAuliffe

Christa McAuliffe
Spaceflight Participant[1]
Nationality	American
Born	September 02 1948(1948--) Boston, Massachusetts
Died	January 28 1986 (aged 39) Cape Canaveral, Florida
Other occupation	Teacher
Selection	Teacher in Space Project
Missions	STS-51-L
Mission insignia

Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986) was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire who was selected from among more than 11,000 applicants to be the first teacher in space. She died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Early life

Born Sharon Christa Corrigan on September 2, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, McAuliffe was the oldest of five children of Edward (deceased) and Grace George Corrigan. Her mother, born Grace George, is of Maronite Lebanese origin through her father (Christa's grandfather) and is a niece of historian Philip Hitti.^[1] The year Christa was born, her father was completing his year at Boston College. Not long thereafter, he took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store and the family moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where she attended and graduated from Marian High School in 1966. As a youth, she was inspired by the Apollo moon landing program, and wrote years later on her astronaut application form that "I watched the Space Age being born, and I would like to participate!"

Career as an educator

McAuliffe attended Framingham State College in her hometown, graduating in 1970. A few weeks later, she married her longstanding boyfriend, Steven J. McAuliffe, and they moved to the Washington, DC metropolitan area so Steven could attend the Georgetown University Law Center. They had two children: Scott and Caroline, who were nine and six respectively when she died.

McAuliffe took a job teaching in the secondary schools, specializing in American history, social studies, law, economics, and a self-designed course: "The American Woman". They stayed in the Washington area for the next eight years; she was teaching and completing a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in Maryland. They moved to Concord, New Hampshire in 1978, when Steven accepted a job as an assistant to the state attorney general. Christa took a teaching post at Concord High School in 1982. She was a Social Studies teacher and taught several courses including "American Culture", "Economics", "American Foreign Policy", and "Women's Studies". A large part of her teaching techniques were field trips or bringing in speakers. In 1984, she learned about NASA's efforts to locate an educator to fly on the space shuttle. They wanted a teacher, or an ordinary person who would spark the interests of the Americans further into the studies of space. The intent was to find a gifted teacher who could communicate with students while in orbit.

Teacher in Space Project

Main article: Teacher in Space Project

NASA selected McAuliffe for this position on July 19, 1985 (another teacher, Barbara Morgan, served as her backup). In the autumn of that year, both she and Morgan took a year-long leave of absence from teaching (NASA paid their salaries) to train for an early 1986 space shuttle mission. While not a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, she would be part of the STS-51-L crew and would teach lessons from space. After being chosen to be the first teacher in space, McAuliffe was interviewed by many TV personalities, including the likes of Larry King, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Regis Philbin. She had an immediate rapport with the media, and the Teacher in Space Project received tremendously popular attention as a result. It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe's presence on Challenger that the accident had such a significant effect on the nation.

Barbara Morgan became a professional astronaut in January 1998, 12 years after McAuliffe's death. Morgan flew on space shuttle mission STS-118 to the International Space Station on August 8 2007, 21 years after the Challenger disaster.

Legacy

Twenty years after the Challenger accident, Christa's son Scott is a multimedia specialist. He married in 2004. Meanwhile, her daughter, Caroline, grew up to pursue the same career that her mother had pursued: teaching. Steve remarried and became a federal judge in 1992. He serves with the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in Concord. Christa's mother Grace, is still talking to schoolchildren about McAuliffe.

After her death, she was honored at many events, including sports events such as the Daytona 500.

The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire and the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center in Pleasant Grove, Utah are named in her memory, as are asteroid 3352 McAuliffe and the McAuliffe crater on the Moon. At least 35 schools have been named after her.

A residence hall located on the campus of her Alma Mater, Bowie State University, is named after McAuliffe: The Christa McAuliffe Residential Complex. Christa McAuliffe Street in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is also named in her honor. Located nearby in Myrtle Beach are Dick Scobee Road and Ronald McNair Boulevard. A portion of U.S. Route 460 passing through Roanoke County, Virginia was renamed Challenger Avenue in honor of the seven fallen crew members.

McAuliffe was portrayed by Karen Allen in the 1990 TV movie Challenger. A documentary film about McAulifffe and Morgan, produced by Renee Sotile & Mary Jo Godges aired on CNN in January 2006, called .^[2] It commemorated the 20th anniversary of her death. The 75 minute feature version narrated by Susan Sarandon with songs by Carly Simon.

The play "Defying Gravity" by Emmy Award-winning writer Jane Anderson tells the story of the 5-year-old daughter of Christa McAuliffe, and the anguish she was forced to bear while the nation watched as her mother's space shuttle exploded. The play combines a montage of characters, including McAuliffe, known only as Teacher, and her daughter Elizabeth, who narrates by transforming back and forth from a confused and hurt little girl to a 30-year-old woman trying to find understanding in the skewed memories of her childhood. Other characters affected by the tragedy include a retired couple touring the country in their Winnebago, a NASA mechanic, and artist Claude Monet, who helps tie together all of these characters as they try to find meaning after the unexpected disaster.

Other media

• The McAuliffe star system in the Wing Commander computer game series is named for her.
• The spaceship on the children's science-fiction series Space Cases, about a group of students lost in space, was called the "Christa".
• She is mentioned in the Dan Brown book Deception Point.

There were many cartoons that honored McAuliffe. One such tribute is when cartoon characters, such as the Animaniacs, put up a statue of McAuliffe on display.

Quotes

• I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.
• I touch the future. I teach.
• No teacher has ever been better prepared to teach a lesson.
• Reach for it. Push yourself as far as you can.
• What are we doing here? We're reaching for the stars.

Further reading

• Burgess, Colin and Grace George Corrigan. Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger Legacy. 2000. ISBN 0-8032-6182-9
• Corrigan, Grace George. A Journal for Christa: Christa McAuliffe, Teacher in Space. 2000. ISBN 0-8032-6411-9
• Hohler, Robert T. I Touch the Future: The Story of Christa McAuliffe. 1986. ISBN 0-394-55721-2

References

External links

• Official NASA bio
• Challenger Center bio
• Christa McAuliffe Planetarium bio
• LIFE: Christa in Her Own Words Photos and interview from 1985
• New York Times obituary
• TIME obituary
• Concord Monitor obituary
• Boston Globe obituary
• Concord, N.H., Remembers McAuliffe's Life
• Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Center for Education and Teaching Excellence

STS-51-L Main articles: STS-51-L, Space Shuttle Challenger, Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, STS-51-L Mission timeline, Space Shuttle Challenger launch decision Crew: Scobee (Cmdr), Smith, Resnik, Onizuka, McNair, Jarvis, McAuliffe