Christa McAuliffe 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 Space Shuttle "Challenger". On January 28, 1986, the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after launch. After her death, schools and scholarships were named in her honor, and in 2004 she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Sharon Christa Corrigan was born on September 2, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the eldest of the five children of accountant Edward Christopher Corrigan
Christa McAuliffe (1922–1990) of Irish descent and Grace Mary Corrigan ( 1924-2018 ) (née George), a substitute teacher, whose father was of Lebanese Maronite descent. McAuliffe was a great niece of Lebanese-American historian Philip Khuri Hitti. She was known by her middle name from an early age, although in later years she signed her name "S. Christa Corrigan", and eventually "S. Christa McAuliffe". 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 they moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where she