4 good links

  1. Christa McAufliffe

    Find-A-Grave profile with photos

  2. Christa McAuliffe Obituary

    1986 report on her life from The New York Times

  3. NASA: Challenger

    NASA's big page of detailed info and links on the mission

  4. The Shuttle Challenger Memorial

    From Arlington Cemetery, photos of the memorial and the crew's story

Christa McAuliffe Biography

Name at birth: Sharon Christa Corrigan

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.

Extra credit:

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.

Common Bonds
The Challenger Commission

They Looked Into America's Most Famous Space Disaster

Something in Common with Christa McAuliffe

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