Christa McAuliffe
| Christa McAuliffe | |
|---|---|
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| NASA Space flight participant | |
| Nationality | American |
| Status | Killed during mission |
| Born | Sharon Christa Corrigan September 2, 1948 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | January 28, 1986 (aged 37) Cape Canaveral, Florida |
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Other occupation
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Teacher |
| Selection | 1985 Teacher in Space Project |
| Missions | STS-51-L |
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Mission insignia
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| Awards |  |
Sharon Christa McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986) was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, and was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
She received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970, and also a master's in education supervision and administration from Bowie State University in 1978. She took a teaching position as a social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire in 1983.
In 1985, she was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project and was scheduled to become the first teacher in space. As a member of mission STS-51-L, she was planning to conduct experiments and teach two lessons from Space Shuttle Challenger. On January 28, 1986, the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after launch. After her death, schools and scholarships were named in her honor, and in 2004 she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
McAuliffe was born as Sharon Christa Corrigan on September 2, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the eldest of the five children of accountant Edward Christopher Corrigan (1922–1990) of Irish descent and Grace Mary Corrigan (née George), a substitute teacher, whose father was of Lebanese Maronite descent. McAuliffe was a great niece of Lebanese-American historian Philip Khuri Hitti. She was known by her middle name from an early age, although in later years she signed her name "S. Christa Corrigan", and eventually "S. Christa McAuliffe".
The year she 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 they moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where she attended and graduated from Marian High School in 1966. As a youth, she was inspired by Project Mercury and the Apollo moon landing program. The day after John Glenn orbited the Earth in Friendship 7, she told a friend at Marian High, "Do you realize that someday people will be going to the Moon? Maybe even taking a bus, and I want to do that!" She wrote years later on her NASA application form: "I watched the Space Age being born, and I would like to participate."
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