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 Wolf herself then closely watched for nearly 30 years. During the Cold War, Wolf was openly critical of the leadership of the GDR, but she maintained a loyalty to the values of socialism and opposed German reunification. Wolf's breakthrough as a writer came in 1963 with the publication of "Der geteilte Himmel" ("Divided Heaven"). Her subsequent works included "Nachdenken über Christa T." ("The Quest for Christa T.") (1968), "Kindheitsmuster" ("Patterns of Childhood") (1976), "Kein Ort. Nirgends" (1979), "Kassandra" ("Cassandra") (1983), "Störfall" ("Accident") (1987), "Medea" (1996), "Auf dem Weg nach Tabou" ("On the Way to Taboo") (1994), and "Stadt der Engel oder