Christa McAuliffe a result. On January 28, 1986, McAuliffe boarded "Challenger" with the other six crew members of STS-51-L. Just 73 seconds into its flight at an altitude of 48,000 feet, the shuttle broke apart, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members. According to NASA, it was in part because of the excitement over her presence on the shuttle that the accident had such a significant effect on the nation. Many schoolchildren were viewing the launch live, and media coverage of the accident was extensive. The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle "Challenger" Accident—also known as the Rogers Commission—was formed
3352 McAuliffe a SQ-type, a transitional type between the common stony and Q-type asteroids, indicating the presence of pyroxene minerals. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumes an albedo of 0.18 and derives a diameter of 1.99 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 16.068, a figure previously obtained by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, and later revised by Czech astronomer Petr Pravec. Between 1998 and 2016, a several rotational lightcurves of "McAuliffe" have been obtained from photometric observations taken by astronomers Petr Pravec at Ondřejov Observatory, Czech Republic, by Andreas Howell at Willowcroft Observatory, Florida, as well