Christa McAuliffe Vice President George H. W. Bush announced that she had been selected for the position. Another teacher, Barbara Morgan, served as her backup. According to Mark Travis of the "Concord Monitor", it was her manner that set her apart from the other candidates. NASA official Alan Ladwig said "she had an infectious enthusiasm", and NASA psychiatrist Terrence McGuire told "New Woman" magazine that "she was the most broad-based, best-balanced person of the 10." Later that year, she and Morgan each took a year-long leave of absence from teaching in order to train for a space shuttle mission in early 1986.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster California; Lowell, Massachusetts; Houston, Texas; and Lenexa, Kansas, named in honor of Christa McAuliffe. The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, a science museum and planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire, is also partly named in her honor. There is also an elementary school in Germantown, Maryland, named after Christa McAuliffe as well as in Green Bay, Wisconsin and Hastings, Minnesota. The draw bridge over the barge canal on State Rd.3 on Merritt Island, Florida, is named the Christa McAuliffe Memorial Bridge. In Oxnard, Ca, McAuliffe Elementary School is named after Christa McAuliffe, and bears tribute to the crew of the "Challenger" flight in