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
Christa McAuliffe school, Steven J. McAuliffe, a 1970 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, and they moved closer to Washington, D.C., so that he could attend the Georgetown University Law Center. They had two children, Scott and Caroline, who were nine and six, respectively, when she died. She obtained her first teaching position in 1970, as an American history teacher at Benjamin Foulois Junior High School in Morningside, Maryland. From 1971 to 1978, she taught history and civics at Thomas Johnson Middle School in Lanham, Maryland. In addition to teaching, she completed a Master of Arts in education supervision and administration from