Christa McAuliffe
McAuliffe Middle School
Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970, and 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. In 1985, McAuliffe 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 the Space Shuttle Challenger. On January 28, 1986, her spacecraft disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, and she was one of seven crew members
who perished in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. After her death, schools and scholarships were named in her honor, and in 2004 she was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.