Christa McAuliffe probable the O-rings had not provided a proper seal. Barbara Radding Morgan, her backup, became a professional astronaut in January 1998, and flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-118, to the International Space Station, on August 8, 2007, aboard "Endeavour", the orbiter that replaced "Challenger". McAuliffe was buried at Blossom Hill Cemetery in her hometown, Concord. She has since been honored at many events, including the Daytona 500 NASCAR race in 1986. The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord and the Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Center for Education and Teaching Excellence at Framingham State University are named in her memory, as are the
1015 Christa inclination of 9° with respect to the ecliptic. The asteroid was first observed as at the Simeiz Observatory in October 1916. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg in February 1924, two days after its official discovery observation. In the Tholen classification, "Christa" is a common C-type asteroid, while in the SMASS classification, it is a Xc-subtype that transitions from the carbonaceous C-type to the X-type asteroids. It has also been characterized as a primitive P-type asteroid by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). In April 2005, a first rotational lightcurve of "Christa" was obtained from photometric observations by French