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Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe (September 2,
1948 – January 28, 1986) was an United
States|American teacher and astronaut from New
Hampshire who died in the explosion of the Space
Shuttle Challenger|Space Shuttle Challenger during
mission STS-51-L.  She was born Sharon Christa
Corrigan in Boston, Massachusetts.

McAuliffe was selected to be the first Teacher in
Space Project|teacher in space on July 19, 1985. 
She joined the STS 51-L crew as a mission
specialist with plans to teach lessons from space.

Selected from among more than 11,000 applicants
from the education profession for entrance into
the astronaut ranks, McAuliffe was the oldest
child of Edward and Grace Corrigan. The year she
was born, her father was completing his sophomore
year at Boston College. Not long thereafter he
took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston
department store and the family moved to the
Boston suburb of Framingham, where she attended
Framingham High School and graduated from Marian
High School in 1966. As a youth she was inspired
by the Project Apollo|Apollo moon landing program,
and wrote years later on her astronaut application
form that "I watched the Space Age being born and
I would like to participate." 

McAuliffe attended Framingham State College in her
hometown, graduating in 1970. A few weeks later
she married her longstanding boyfriend, Steven
McAuliffe, and they moved to the Washington, DC
metropolitan area so Steven could attend the
Georgetown University Law Center. She took a job
teaching in the secondary schools, specializing in
American history and social studies. They stayed
in the Washington area for the next eight years,
she teaching and completing a Master of Arts from
Bowie State University in Maryland. They moved to
Concord, New Hampshire in 1978 when Steven
accepted a job as an assistant to the state
attorney general. Christa took a teaching post at
Concord High School in 1982, and in 1984 learned
about NASA's efforts to locate an educator to fly
on the Space Shuttle|shuttle. The intent was to
find a gifted teacher who could communicate with
students while in orbit. 

NASA selected McAuliffe for this position in the
summer of 1984 and in the fall she took a
year-long leave of absence from teaching (NASA
paid her salary), and trained for an early 1986
shuttle mission. She had an immediate rapport with
the media, and the teacher in space program
received tremendous popular attention as a result.
It is in part because of the excitement over
McAuliffe's presence on the Challenger that the
accident had such a significant impact on the
nation.

Because of McAuliffe's presence on the Challenger,
 children all over the world were watching the
launch and subsequent explosion on live
television. 

3352 McAuliffe|Asteroid 3352 McAuliffe is named in
her memory, as is the McAuliffe (crater)|McAuliffe
crater on the Moon, the Christa McAuliffe
Planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire and the
Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center in
Pleasant Grove, Utah. In the years after the
tragedy, numerous schools were named after her,
including those in Jackson, New Jersey, Altoona,
Pennsylvania, Yakima, Washington, San Antonio,
Texas, Bakersfield, California, Shawnee, Kansas,
Palm Bay, Florida, West Hastings, Minnesota,
Saratoga, California, Sammamish, Washington and
Tinley Park, Illinois.





==References==
*
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/mcauliffe.ht
ml Official NASA Bio
* http://www.challenger.org/about/mcauliffe.cfm
Challenger Center bio