Christa McAuliffe biography
Date of birth : 1948-09-02
Date of death : 1986-01-28
Birthplace : Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Nationality : American
Category : Science and Technology
Last modified : 2011-06-11
Credited as : Teacher, NASA Spaceflight Participant[, killed during mission Space Shuttle Challenger
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She received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970, and also a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in 1978. She took a teaching post as a social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire in 1982.
Christa McAuliffe was a high school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire who died with six other astronauts in the 1986 explosion of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger. She was chosen as the first participant in the Teacher in Space Program created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1984. A native of Massachusetts, McAufliffe had been teaching for fifteen years when she applied for the program. She was selected in 1985 to be the first civilian in orbit (Californian Barbara Morgan was selected as her back-up). The shuttle blasted off on 28 January 1986 and exploded about 75 seconds after launch, killing everyone aboard. The explosion later was blamed on faulty booster rocket O-rings.
She married Steven McAuliffe in 1970; they had a son, Scott, and a daughter, Caroline... Other astronauts aboard the Challenger: Francis R. "Dick" Scobee (mission commander), Michael J. Smith, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik... The Challenger deaths were the first-ever fatalities during an American space flight, but in 1967 three astronauts were killed while training on the launch pad for the first Apollo mission: Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
Another shuttle, Columbia, disintegrated while returning to Earth on February 1, 2003, killing all seven aboard.
