| Aircraft
Accidents Theodore Freeman Charles Bassett II Elliot See Clifton Williams, Jr. Robert Lawrence Michael Adams Yuri Gagarin John McKay Stephen Thorne Stanley David Griggs Manley Carter, Jr. Patricia Hilliard Robertson
Apollo 1
Soyuz 11
Challenger STS-51L
Columbia
STS-107 Other |
orn: 2 September 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts. Education: Received bachelor of arts degree from Framingham State College, Massachusetts, in 1970, and a 1978 masters degree in education from Bowie State College in Maryland. Marital Status: Married to Steven J. McAuliffe. Children: Scott and Caroline. Awards: McAuliffe and her six crewmates were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on 23 July 2004. Special Honors: Christa was selected as the primary candidate for NASA's Teacher In Space program on July 19, 1985. Over 11,000 applied for this position. Experience: McAuliffe began teaching in 1970. She taught American history and English to 7th and 8th graders, as well as economics, law, American history and social studies to high school students in Concord, New Hampshire. After developing her own curriculum, she also taught a new course, "The American Woman." NASA Experience: McAuliffe's responsibility on the Challenger mission was to teach lessons from space via satellite to school children across the United States. Project "Classroom Earth" consisted of two lessons, "The Ultimate Field Trip" and "Where We've Been, Where We're Going and Why." As the first teacher in space, McAuliffe's goal was to "humanize the Space Age by giving a perspective from a non-astronaut." Her only mission was as payload specialist-2 of Challenger STS-51L. This mission was to have deployed a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, and a retrievable spacecraft, SPARTAN, to study Comet Halley. Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven on board. Quote: "I touch the future... I teach." |
