How a teacher flew into space, and why didn’t she return to Earth

She was a American social studies teacher who taught in high school and was 37 years old when she was chosen from 11,000 applicants for the role of the first “private person” to go into space. On January 28, 1986, after a year of preliminary training, she, among other professional astronauts, launched aboard the space shuttle Challenger. She planned to record six science lessons in low-Earth orbit for her students. But something went wrong.

Who was Christa McAuliffe?

She was born in 1948 in Boston under the name Sharon Christa Corrigan and was the eldest of five children in the family. Her Irish-born father worked as an accountant, and her mother was a homemaker who raised children. Shortly after Christa’s birth, the family moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where the girl graduated from high school and went to university. Almost immediately after graduating from high school, Christa married her classmate Stephen McAuliffe, with whom they had been friends since childhood. After graduating from university, the couple had two children: a son, Scott, and a daughter, Caroline.

In 1970, Christa received a Bachelor of Arts degree, and then a master’s degree in education from Bowie State College in Maryland and began teaching, first in elementary and middle grades, and later began teaching English, economics, law, history, and personally developed a course for high school students called “An American woman.”

In 1983, they moved to Concord, New Hampshire, where Christa’s husband, a lawyer by training, was offered a job as an assistant attorney general. Christa started working as a teacher at Concord High School. She was a creative and energetic teacher, often taking her students on field trips to museums and providing them with extensive knowledge beyond the general education curriculum.

In her youth, she was inspired by the Apollo moon landing program, and she told her husband that perhaps they would live to see the time when people would fly to the moon as they travel to another city on a regular bus today. Visit. A F R I N I K . C O M .For the full article. At that time, she did not even imagine that she would have such an opportunity to visit space.

Choosing the first teacher in space

When NASA announced the Teacher in Space program in 1984, Christa did not hesitate to submit an application in which she wrote: “I’ve watched the space age begin, and I’d like to be a part of it.” She did not expect to be chosen because she felt like an ordinary person compared to other candidates, many of whom were scientists with doctorates. It took several months before the results of the election became known. It seemed fantastic to her that among eleven thousand applicants, the choice of the first teacher in space fell on her. She was over the moon.

After her candidacy was approved, Christa went to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for a year to begin training under the NASA program. She had to study special sciences, study textbooks, and delve into all the subtleties of life in orbit – from cooking dinner to using high-tech devices. She was very worried that other astronauts would not accept her as a member of the team, so she tried very hard, gained experience flying high-performance aircraft, trained on special simulators, mastered the state of weightlessness in the cargo hold of a NASA aircraft, and constantly kept a diary of her observations.

Despite her husband’s support in every possible way, Christa admitted that the most difficult test for her at that time was being away from home for a whole year, not being able to hug Stephen, kiss the children goodnight, and ask how their day was. She tried to call them all the time and keep them informed of everything that happened to her during the day. She also kept in touch with her students, telling them about all the stages of preparation and sharing the news with them until the start day arrived.

The Challenger explosion

After several delays and postponements of the flight due to the weather, the launch day of the Challenger was finally announced, despite the air temperature remaining below zero, making it the “coldest” launch in NASA’s history. The shuttle launched from the Kennedy Space Center on January 28, 1986, at 11:38 a.m.

Christa’s son was 9 years old, and her daughter was 6 years old at the time. Together with their father and other relatives of the astronauts, they watched the launch of the shuttle from the roof of the Mission Control Center and greeted the launch with cheers and fireworks.

The problems began immediately after launch – the O-ring between the segments of the solid-fuel rocket booster began to leak, superheated gases broke through the seal and began to burn from the outside – this was visible from the ground, but none of those present, except, of course, the specialists, at first did not understand what was happening. Someone even said that this is how it should be.

One minute and 13 seconds later, when the speed of the Challenger, which was already at an altitude of 14,000 meters, reached 1,720 kilometers per hour, an explosion and detonation of fuel occurred. The spacecraft broke up over the Atlantic Ocean; the crew cabin with seven astronauts on board separated from the disintegrating shuttle, continued to rise for another 25 seconds to a height of about 19 thousand meters and then began to fall into the ocean. 2 minutes and 45 seconds after the explosion, the cabin crashed into the surface of the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 333 kilometers per hour. The crew had no chance of escape.

This was not the only tragedy of NASA’s space flight, but the first to happen in front of the entire world, who watched the launch live and from numerous viewing platforms. Later, an investigation revealed that the root cause of the accident was the freezing January weather, which caused the failure of the O-ring at launch and the subsequent chain reaction that led to the explosion of the shuttle and the death of the entire crew.

The Legacy of Christa McAuliffe

Dozens of Christa McAuliffe’s students, educators who vied with her for the title of the first teacher in space, and their family members gather every year at Cape Canaveral in Florida, near the place where the Challenger spacecraft launched 30 years ago, to honor the memory of the seven astronauts who died on board. Among them are Christa’s son and daughter, who also became teachers in memory of their mother, and her husband, Stephen, who now works as a federal judge.

Many of the semi-finalists of the Teacher in Space contest are already retired, but the disaster is still fresh in their memory; they still remember and love Christa and firmly believe that everything was not in vain. For future generations, she has become a symbol of opportunity and hope, and her legacy continues to shape the course of space exploration.

Following the Challenger tragedy, the families of the deceased crew members came together to establish the Challenger Learning Center. This resource provides educational materials for students, teachers, and parents, with 42 branches located in various cities across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

When the Challenger shuttle exploded just off the ground, it wasn’t just a spacecraft that had failed. It was the dream of millions of people, which seemed to split in the cold Atlantic sky. But twenty years later, elementary school teacher Barbara Morgan, who had been trained as a backup astronaut to Christa McAuliffe, nevertheless went into space as part of the Teacher in Space project and spent twelve days in orbit, completing the minimum program that her predecessor had prepared.

In 2024, in New Hampshire, in the state where Christa McAuliffe taught, a monument was unveiled – a bronze statue depicting her in full height, in a NASA flight suit, smiling and striding forward, similar to how she looked on the day she headed to the launch pad, on her first, but not a successful space flight.

Christa dreamed of becoming the first teacher in space, conducting lessons from orbit and turning the shuttle into a classroom without borders. Her words uttered shortly before the start: “I touch the future, I teach” – extracted from themselves a truth as deep as any equation. After all, by teaching, we are not just passing on knowledge; we are passing on the torch of curiosity, lighting the way for unborn generations.