Payload Specialists
Christa McAuliffe
The Teacher in Space, chosen from 11,000 applicants.
Christa McAuliffe, a high school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, was selected from more than 11,000 applicants as the first participant in NASA’s Teacher in Space Project, planning to teach live lessons from orbit to millions of schoolchildren.
‘I touch the future — I teach,’ she said. She was 37 when Challenger was lost 73 seconds after launch. Her backup, Barbara Morgan, eventually flew to the ISS in 2007, and McAuliffe’s planned lessons were finally filmed there in her honor.