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
Christa McAuliffe of her death. It was narrated by Susan Sarandon, and included an original song by Carly Simon. Her parents worked with Framingham State College to establish the McAuliffe Center. Her husband Steven J. McAuliffe remarried and in 1992 became a federal judge, serving with the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in Concord. Her son, Scott, completed graduate studies in marine biology, and her daughter, Caroline, went on to pursue the same career as her mother: teaching. On July 23, 2004, she and all the other 13 astronauts lost in both the "Challenger" and "Columbia" disasters