Christa McAuliffe Vice President George H. W. Bush announced that she had been selected for the position. Another teacher, Barbara Morgan, served as her backup. According to Mark Travis of the "Concord Monitor", it was her manner that set her apart from the other candidates. NASA official Alan Ladwig said "she had an infectious enthusiasm", and NASA psychiatrist Terrence McGuire told "New Woman" magazine that "she was the most broad-based, best-balanced person of the 10." Later that year, she and Morgan each took a year-long leave of absence from teaching in order to train for a space shuttle mission in early 1986.
3352 McAuliffe 3352 McAuliffe 3352 McAuliffe (), provisional designation , is a rare-type asteroid and suspected binary system, classified as near-Earth object of the Amor group, approximately 2 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 6 February 1981, by American astronomer Norman Thomas at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, United States. Originally, this asteroid was the target of the 1998 Deep Space 1 mission, but that mission was eventually rerouted to 9969 Braille. It was named in memory of Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe. "McAuliffe" orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.2–2.6 AU once every 2 years and 7