Teacher in Space Project to interested teachers while 11,000 teachers sent completed applications to NASA. Each application included a potential lesson that would be taught from space while on the Space Shuttle. The applications were sorted and then sent to the various State Departments of Education, who were then responsible for narrowing down their state applicants to a final set of two each. These applicants were notified of their selections and were gathered together for further selection processes down to ten finalists. These were then trained for a time, and in 1985 NASA selected Christa McAuliffe to be the first teacher in space, with
Ellison Onizuka that took off from Kennedy Space Center at 11:38:00 EST (16:38:00 UTC) on January 28, 1986. The other "Challenger" crew members were commander Dick Scobee, pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialists Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik, and payload specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe. It was destroyed when a flame jet leaking from a solid rocket booster ruptured the liquid hydrogen fuel tank 73 seconds after launch. All seven crew members were killed. Following the "Challenger" disaster, examination of the recovered vehicle cockpit revealed that three of the crew members Personal Egress Air Packs were activated: those of Onizuka, mission specialist